I was working on a A3 to address racial equity in the workplace. Through the A3 process it was ascertained that 35% of staff did not feel comfortable discussing race and racism in the workplace, resulting in an organizational culture and environment unable to advance racial equity. The goal of the project was to continue the A3 process to advance racial equity by increasing staff awareness and comfortability (staff feeling safe) in discussing and addressing racism in the workplace. The target was 100% of staff would have comfort discussing racism in the workplace by December 2021.
The politicization and circulating misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine has led to increased vaccine hesitancy. In particular, Black and Latino communities have suffered the burden of infections and death, yet lag in their vaccination rates. Based on experience, and research done on these local communities, we know that if information is scientifically accurate, but not adapted to the local contexts, people are less likely to trust the information and may look elsewhere for answers.
I wanted to encourage professional growth, increase operational contributions, and improve staff retention for the medical assistants in ambulatory care across the organization. This project was personally important to me because 90% (525 out of 584) of the medical assistants in Stanford Health Care are women and women of color. The goal of the project was to develop a fair, realistic, and inclusive promotional ladder to incentivize medical assistants in the ambulatory care setting at Stanford Health Care.
Marginalized communities were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with increased cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. As the County COVID-19 testing lead, I worked to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 testing in marginalized communities across Los Angeles County.
As a woman leader, I felt lonely. Other leaders looked nothing like me and I did not know if I belonged. Moreover, I was not alone; women leaders all across the United States felt this way. Of course, I decided to do something about it and founded an organization ‘PWL’ where women physician leaders have a safe space, a community to be authentically themselves as healthcare leaders. Our ultimate goal is to get 50-50 gender equity in healthcare leadership through advocacy work and empowerment of women physicians.
I knew I wanted to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at CommuniCare Health Centers (CCHC) shortly after I became CMO. I have been passionately committed to cultural humility and DEI efforts throughout my career, and I brought this passion with me when I joined CCHC. This particular project is a piece of a larger effort at CCHC, in which I am participating with a team of colleagues, to improve DEI at CCHC.
My project aims to address the six-fold disparity in the California Latinx physician workforce to the populations they serve. This workforce mismatch contributes to health care disparities by diminishing access to care for marginalized populations as well as the delivery of culturally and linguistically sensitive care. This issue hits at the heart of why I pursued medicine over 20 years ago; a desire to provide service to our most vulnerable populations.
Objective: The project will use deliberative democracy methods to engage stakeholders most impacted by pregnancy-related death in Medi-Cal to generate solutions and design interventions to support equity in maternal health outcomes for Medi-Cal-covered births.
Black birthing mothers and their babies are dying in one of the most progressive and wealthiest cities of the country. I engaged San Francisco’s city officials and the Department of Public Health leadership to do something about health inequities and improve disparities impacting Black/African American birthing people. I had the opportunity to present data on preterm birth, infant mortality and poor maternal health outcomes, address social determinates of health, and advocate for new funds with recommendations to close the gaps.