Our Equity Journey

As caregivers at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital, we’re committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diverse teams engage with children and families in an equitable and just manner. Equity is a vital component of our core mission to help people live their healthiest lives possible. Despite “equitable” care being a longstanding, essential element to quality health care, we recognize we haven’t consistently achieved that vision. However, we embrace the spirit of highly acclaimed, poet-laurate Maya Angelou: as we learn more and know better, we will then strive to do better. Like with other elements of quality in health care, such as safety and patient-centeredness, we’ll use our fundamental commitment to the quality improvement process to turn this lofty aspiration into concrete, actionable steps that can be measured and improved.

Our team is guided by the motto that for decades has graced our hospital and clinic walls: “The Child First and Always.” Whether through the lens of history or current statistics on race and inequity, we see that, in our society, not all children are always first. We seek to be part of the solution, and to address any inequities we identify. Though we’ve done our best previously, we now know we can do better, and we stand ready to do all we can to build a world where all children are demonstrably first and always.

With this inaugural report, we seek to be transparent to our colleagues and the communities we serve. We provide insights to the steps we’ve taken in this equity journey, what we plan to do, and where we collectively need to go to improve in the essential domains of equity, diversity, and inclusion. This journey will require a long-term commitment and will present challenges along the way. Each of us will be called upon to contribute our part. Like our decades-long effort to improve patient safety, our equity journey will involve hard conversations, humility as we assess our own performance, and all the grit and determination we have. Like with safety, achieving our equity aspirations will require listening, skill-building, and laser focus to identify opportunities and shortfalls. This sensitive work requires vulnerability; we’ll need to support each other as we redouble our efforts to improve the situations and circumstances of which we’re becoming aware.

Frankly, we have ample documentation of health care inequities. Now is the time to act. We need to design interventions that lessen, then eliminate, those inequalities. Issuing affirming statements is not enough; real progress requires careful review of our care processes, data monitoring, and transparency in reporting.

Teamwork and two-way communication are foundational in equity work, so we share the information in this report to continue this essential dialogue with our teams and those we serve. To do better, we’ll need to hear from our many stakeholders about your experiences with the activities we document in this report’s pages. Hearing from those who deliver care—and those who receive it—will let us know if we’re having the necessary impact.;

Another quote from Maya Angelou gives us hope: “Every journey begins with a single step.” We’ve taken that first step and are committed to taking many more on this equity journey to ensure each and every child is truly first, and always.