Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Reducing Bias in Healthcare (Coursera)

The racial and ethnic makeup of the United States is constantly shifting, and more specifically, becoming more diverse. Such changes require a more health equity-focused workforce and health equity-minded leadership. Bias training plays an essential role in leadership development, and it’s become imperative for all healthcare workers to recognize the foundational connection between biases and health care management and policy.

This course is designed to challenge your awareness, values, and actions on implicit and unconscious bias, and is intended to guide individuals hoping to contribute to this work in a healthcare context. The following core concepts form the basis of instruction and together offer an introductory perspective on this pressing topic: 1.) Community Orientation; 2.) Organizational Awareness; 3.) Professionalism; 4.) Accountability, Change Leadership, and Strategic Orientation.

An immersive 360-video experience allows you to engage in healthcare situations that center bias on multiple levels of our healthcare delivery systems. You will be prompted to consider multiple perspectives and roles, and use empathy to analyze bias and take action.

Syllabus

WEEK 1

Community Orientation

Community Orientation is the ability to align one’s own and the organization’s priorities with the needs and values of the community, including its cultural and ethnocentric values and to move health forward in line with population-based wellness needs and national health agenda.

WEEK 2

Organizational Awareness

Organizational Awareness is ability to understand and learn the formal and informal decision-making structures and power relationships in an organization or industry (e.g., stakeholders, suppliers). This includes the ability to identify who the real decision makers are and the individuals who can influence them, and to predict how new events will affect individuals and groups within the organization.

WEEK 3

Professionalism

Professionalism is the demonstration of ethics, sound professional practices, social accountability, and community stewardship; the desire to act in a way that is consistent with one’s values and what one says is important.

WEEK 4

Special Topics: Accountability, Change Leadership, and Strategic Orientation

Accountability is our ability to hold people accountable to standards of performance; Change Leadership is to influence people towards the achievement of a set of goals; and Strategic Orientation is to consider implications of decisions in strategic ways that continually improve organizational long-term success.