Health Equity

The Opportunity to Be Healthy

We focus on reducing health disparities in two ways: through programs and direct services, as well as changing broken systems that don’t work for everyone. This dual focus aims to remove economic and social obstacles while ensuring everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthy.

As a result of stakeholder input and analysis of data disaggregated by race, in Grand Rapids we are investing in:

• Bringing greater diversity to maternal and child health birth support professions (services) and creating sustainable funding for those roles (systems).
• Connecting our maternal and child health grantees with our food grantees in ways that reveal the underlying sources of food insecurity and eliminate disparities (systems and services).
• Creating cross-sector partnerships across the health, employment and education systems to address racial equity and health equity (services).

Read about health equity in Grand Rapids: Health Equity in Grand Rapids’ “Neighborhoods of Focus.”