HJBR Jan/Feb 2022

48 JAN / FEB 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE LDH CORNER cation, housing and many other factors that can cause someone to have a “bad health day” or a “good health day.” We want to really draw attention to the foundations of community health and in- equities in health outcomes and make sure people are having many more good health days than bad ones. As a department, we are working every day on addressing health outcomes, but at the same time, we can’t ignore the fact that we have such disparate poverty rates and inequities in housing and education — something that is a communi- ty and a state problem we all have to work on. We can’t just be talking about health and medical solutions in a vacuum. There is more to the story than just healthcare. HINES Another example of a foundation of health is educational attainment and ac- cess to high-quality education. Access to high-quality education is also tied to ac- cess to insurance and rent. A person who has higher educational attainment tends to have more opportunities for employment, which tends to lead to more opportunities for health insurance, which tends to lead to more visits to a doctor. So, we know that the more resources put into early education, the more likely you are to see better health outcomes, longer life expectancy and reduced healthcare costs over a lifetime. Educational attainment is one example of a foundation of health that has been overlooked for a long time. BMAC What kind of work did it take to make the State Health Assessment dashboard? And what do you think the public should get out of the dashboard? HINES When developing the dashboard with our technology partner, mySidewalk, we wanted to focus on health equity to guide us on how we present information and to identify what data would need to be placed on the dashboard. The Robert Wood John- son definition of health equity is that every- one has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. We wanted the public to be able to look at the dashboard and understand the drivers of health inequities within their individual communities. This can be broken down by region or parish. We also want the public to have a con- crete idea of how to address some of the health inequity issues. Through the dash- board, you can learn how to get involved. We don’t want the dashboard to just be a place where people go and see bad news, but, rather, a place to go to receive an ac- curate picture of what’s going on and have guidance on how to address the problems. BMAC How did you decide to focus on health equity in the State HealthAssessment? HINES It’s simply not possible to improve health outcomes in the state without a fo- cus on health equity. For this reason, health equity is really at the heart of public health. It has also become more of a focus on ac- creditation as well, and we are an accredit- ed state health department. As such, it’s vital that we address health equity in our plans, our processes and our programs. Department leadership recognizes that we must address the foundations of com- munity health to make substantive changes in health outcomes and to make Louisiana a more equitable place. We know that many people who are disproportionately impact- ed by our poor health outcomes tend to be communities that have inequitable ser- vices, programs and living conditions. There are several factors that negatively impact health outcomes that relate to eq- uitable access. For example, if nutrition is poor in a community, it’s going to be hard to drive down or to address all the issues that arise because of poor nutrition, whether it be widespread diabetes or heart disease. In short, pursuing health equity is just the right thing to do for the people of Louisiana to live healthier, fuller lives, and the Gover- nor and Health Secretary Phillips recognize that and have made doing so a top priority. BMAC How can the community get involved in the State Health Improvement Plan? HINES We would love for people to get in- volved in developing this plan. We need to have the right people at the table, the right voices being lifted, and we want to address the real needs. It’s the community’s plan. We would like to engage groups across the state to be our partners in implement- “We know that fixing health inequities is not a one-size-fits-all approach, so we need to figure out what strategies will work for each region.”