OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY WEEK 2021 FEATURE
The RCOT professional practice team , when asked how occupational therapists might start to think about promoting health equity in their own professional roles , commented : ‘ Have a shared understanding about the interest across your team , or service , around addressing health inequalities .
‘ Consider whether you have a collective vision or aim , or a set of values that you can adopt between yourselves to make sure this remains a visible priority across your joint work . Look at your service design . Who are you reaching in the population and who are you not ? Who are you not reaching who may need your help and support ? How well do your services care holistically for everyone to best meet their needs equally ? Which are the groups that may need extra care and attention to equalise this ?
‘ You may wish to collect data on this by working with your informatics team or the local public health team . Consider how well team members understand health inequalities and involve them in your work to understand the situation and intervene .
‘ As well as this , remember to include a health inequalities lens for quality improvement projects , adverse event learning or root-cause analyses .’
To further discussion around health equity and share some of the great work occupational therapists are doing in this area , we are launching Occupational Therapy Week with # OTsForEquity : Launch event on 1 November , showing Sir Michael Marmot ’ s annual conference presentation on social justice and health equity ( read the report in OTnews , July 2021 , page 15 ), followed by a live Q & A .
Target resources to those with the greatest need
We talk to Linda Hindle , Deputy Chief AHP Officer for England , Department of Health and Social Care , about health equity
OTnews : What does health equity mean to you ? Linda Hindle : To me it is about ensuring everyone has the same opportunity to access good health outcomes . This may mean providing more or different services to some groups than others to avoid them being disadvantaged .
Providing services with a view to health equity is more than providing services equally . it involves targeting services and resources to those with the greatest need or more challenges to overcome .
OTnews : Can you give us some examples of work that occupational therapists can do to support people with specific needs ( ie ethnic and racial minority communities , people living in low income households , or members of the LGBTQ + community ) and to help promote health equity ? Linda Hindle : The work the Royal College does to lead the work as a clinical outcome programme is a great example of this . We know that not being in good work is one of the biggest public health issues .
OTnews : What are the main factors that stop a person from achieving their best health ? Linda Hindle : The social determinants of health describe some of the environmental factors that affect a person ’ s health and wellbeing , these are often factors over which they have no control , the factors into which individuals are born , grow and live such as access to a good education , safe home , good employment , social connections and social justice .
OTnews : As occupational therapists ( or AHPs ) we know that working towards tackling the factors that create health inequality is the way forward , but how do we achieve this as a profession ? Linda Hindle : We have just published with the Kings Fund a great framework to describe what health inequalities means in the context of AHP practice ; reading this is a great start . The first thing that we can all do is make sure that we understand our own biases and privilege and the disparities that exist within our communities ; this will support us to take that into account when we are working with individuals and communities and design services that are based on the needs of local people . As respected professions , we also have an opportunity to advocate on behalf of communities and groups who are disadvantaged .
OTnews : How are you promoting health equity in your professional role ? Linda Hindle : In my national role I have been working to develop tools and resource to support allied health professionals to understand their contribution to reducing health inequalities . At a more local level , I lead our directorate ’ s work on employee engagement , inclusion and diversity , where we strive to ensure that everyone within our team feels valued , respected , is treated fairly and has equal opportunities .
Linda Hindle , Deputy Chief AHP Officer for England , Department of Health and Social Care
Equality versus Equity
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