Health Equity Learning Community
Foundation for Healthy Communities established the Health Equity Learning Community (HELC) to advance equitable care in New Hampshire.
The HELC is designed for hospitals and health systems working to advance health equity in their organizations for their patients, employees and communities, providing a collaborative platform for NH hospitals to learn from experts, share best practices and identify action steps for advancing health equity in their organizations.
Components of the 2025 Health Equity Learning Community
As a result of what we learned from hospitals, we have developed the 2025 HELC. Key components of the 2025 HELC include:
- Health Equity Transformation Assessment
- Health Equity Innovation Summit
- Affinity Groups
- Curated tools and resources
- Webinars
Health Equity Learning Community Components
Hospitals and health systems throughout NH are encouraged to complete the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Health Equity Transformation Assessment (HETA).
The AHA’s HETA is an electronic assessment tool providing hospitals and health systems with their current position on their health equity journey. The assessment is based on the AHA’s Health Equity Roadmap, a framework to help hospitals and health care systems advance equity and build an equitable culture. The HETA assesses progress in six levers of transformation:
For more information on the AHA’s HETA, please visit their website.
The 2025 Hospital Health Equity Learning Community features a Health Equity Innovation Summit on March 13th, 2025. The summit, Fitting the Pieces Together: Codesigning Innovative Solutions to Ensure Health for All, is a one-day, interactive workshop designed for hospitals and health systems.
Facilitated by the American Hospital Association, participants are guided through an innovation design thinking process. The goal is to address pressing challenges and identify innovative solutions and action steps to implement both within your organization and as a collective group.
By the end of the Summit, participants will have developed six action steps towards both organizational and collective advancement in health equity. These action steps will serve as the foundation for the work of the Health Equity Learning Community throughout 2025.
Space is limited, and the Foundation for Healthy Communities is working with our hospital contacts to identify participants from each NH hospital.
Thank you to our event sponsors!
Starting April 2025, the FHC will host and facilitate affinity groups. There will be three separate groups, each focused on a different area of interest chosen by the hospitals. The goal of the affinity groups is to support hospital and health system efforts to achieve heath equity and drive change as they pursue the action steps formed in the Health Equity Innovation Summit.
These affinity groups serve as a platform for peer networking, sharing best practices and exchanging tools and resources as they monitor their progress with their chosen action steps.
Our 2025 webinar schedule will dive deeper into topics of interest among the hospitals and health systems.
Click here to access the DEIB & Health Equity Resources
For more information, please contact Beth Gustafson Wheeler, Sr. Director of Population Health & Health Equity at (603) 415-4278.
