Advancing health equity calls for a new kind of leader and a new approach to leadership development. Clinical Scholars and Culture of Health Leaders are mid-career leadership development programs supporting the emergence of collaborative and systemic approaches, bringing teams of leaders together with others in the community to work toward the common goal of lessening health disparities. In each chapter of this book, the authors share how they tackled seemingly intractable issues, making headway through applying the principles of adaptive leadership in unbounded systems to create not only outcomes but also impacts on health disparities and, in some cases, sustainable and scalable applications. In this volume, you will learn how Clinical Scholars and Culture of Health Leaders programs curated and measured the successful learning and development of these dedicated health-equity advocates.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

"This book concerns the importance of achieving health equity throughout the United States. Its publication is timely, given the major challenges in American health care in recent years. These include reductions in health care coverage, the loss of funding to tackle social determinants of health, and the growing risks associated with climate change. The abundant data that document health inequities in housing, education, incarceration, income, opportunity, and so much else in the United States reveal the extent of the health-based challenges the nation faces as a whole. With these issues in mind, this book tackles a variety of topics centered on a "Culture for Health," and includes contributions from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Sharing Knowledge to Build a Culture of Health conferences. The first part of this volume concerns the assets intrinsic to cultural identity and the contribution to the nation's well-being that this diversity brings. Next, the book calls attention to the places where people spend much of their time and shows how each setting has the power to generate health, or to undermine it. Finally, this book closes with a section on a broad range of interconnected topics that have drawn considerable attention from many fields and brought new perspectives to the table."--

In 2013, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) began its Culture of Health initiative. To implement the primary Culture of Health outcome of improved population health, well-being, and equity, RWJF worked with RAND to develop an action framework.

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

The Culture Cure delivers the essential DNA required to break free of the status quo environment that continues to dominate the American healthcare industry. It begins with the understanding of fundamental organizational core values that lay the foundation for excellence in culture, quality, finance, and governance, known as the trees of transcendence. The Culture Cure is the medicine that can ultimately elevate the standing of the United States' healthcare system ranking among top healthcare systems, no longer trailing behind other developed countries in world. This book provides the reader with nine foundational values that transform a healthcare organization, outfitting it to succeed in the modern environment of high accountability and value-based medicine. Plagued by traditional leadership paradigms, the healthcare industry continues to deliver status quo results. Transformational thinking must dominate by embracing the values that have been vetted over 25 years in healthcare settings that are described in The Culture Cure. Transformational cultures deliver excellence, innovation, and best practices that are not afraid to own, manage, create, and develop high reliable organizations of transcendence. Delivering a systemic and collegial leadership approach to continuous improvement breathes new life into healthcare to address the chronic pain associated with underperformance. With the heated debate over America's healthcare reform and recent crises in our government-run healthcare system, transformation has become imperative. Transformation is never simple, particularly in an industry that has been described by many leadership experts as one of the most complex industries to lead. There is a public call for healthcare leaders to initiate wide-scale transformation from our traditional healthcare culture into one that innovates to meet today's challenges. The availability of evidence-based information mandates industry transformation. But for most leaders the question still remains, how? How do we transition from our traditional environment to create a foundational culture that will proactively sustain the winds of change, and create a high reliable organization? To begin this journey it requires acknowledging the most important asset in any healthcare entity, which is the employees. Developing the best colleagues, the best leaders, and the best culture leads to achieving an environment of sustainable success. The Culture Cure is about placing the oxygen mask on the employees, before securing it on the patient. Employees can not give what they do not have. Quality of care, financial sustainability, and healthcare excellence will follow when employees function in a culture that fosters personal development, positive influence, and a trusting empowerment. Author Pamela M. Tripp, has lived her passion for healthcare excellence over the past 35 years, serving as a healthcare educator, senior leader, and turnaround Chief Executive Officer. Implementing the tenets of The Culture Cure has secured national and international service excellence and quality of care awards and most recently the distinction of being the first federally qualified community health center system in the nation to receive the First Milestone Malcolm Baldrige: Governors Quest for Excellence recognition.