As a guiding principle of United Hospital Fund’s new Health Equity Fellowship, it should be no surprise that the power of collective leadership was on full display as the inaugural class kicked off the program on October 28.
In a celebratory reception at the Ford Foundation, eight fellows selected for the first fellowship class were joined by leaders from their health care institutions, programmatic and advisory partners of the 18-month learning experience, and community-based organization partners who will collaborate on each fellow’s Action Learning Project tackling health equity challenges. The evening was a fitting start to the program, which centers around the guiding principles of equity, action for systems change, and collective leadership.
“The work of health equity is not just important, but also incredibly difficult. The good news is that in this room we have convened an ecosystem of support like no other,” HEF Director Camila Pazos Fajardo told the crowd. “Your enthusiasm and presence here underscore the importance of this mission, and the collective effort required to drive meaningful change.”
United Hospital Fund’s Health Equity Fellowship was designed to cultivate the next generation of health equity changemakers in New York. It is funded by UHF with support from the Freedom Together Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund.
During the program, fellows will complete a curriculum aimed at deepening their leadership capacities and implementing an innovative project that moves beyond a narrow clinical focus to creatively advance care, reduce health disparities, and improve health outcomes within their served community. The 2024-26 class of fellows’ action learning projects span a range of health equity issues, from expanding health care access for immigrants, to improving chronic disease management, addressing food insecurity for underserved populations, and integrating holistic approaches like yoga and meditative journaling into clinical care.
At the kick-off event, fellows and attendees heard some insight about how to best set up these and overall equity efforts for success during a fireside chat between United Hospital Fund President and CEO Oxiris Barbot, MD, and Freedom Together Foundation President Deepak Bhargava.
Mr. Bhargava underscored the importance of risk-taking to enact systems change, noting that historical disenfranchisement has led to a culture of distrust in the institutions of civil society, including the health care system. Transforming these systems will require both partnership within the institutions and collaboration with those affected by its failures.
“Individual business, or labor, or education, or health leaders by themselves standing up and saying, ‘I’m going to take a stand,’ often will get knocked down. They need peers who support each other,” Mr. Bhargava said. “Part of our vision for leadership is how do we support people who are committed to that kind of systems transformation and—knowing it’s hard, knowing it will require collaboration—at the end of the day are willing to step forward and take that risk.”
Dr. Barbot shared that the Health Equity Fellowship is inspired by a fellowship she completed early in her career, Medicine as a Profession, which helped demonstrate that work done outside clinical walls can be as important to patients’ health as the work within clinical spaces.
“One of the most important things that I learned through that fellowship was that when we’re in the clinical room with our patients, we bear witness to their reality. We bear witness to how housing, economics, or education impact their health,” Dr. Barbot said. “Learning how to take that and speaking on it, in collaboration with community, to advance what the community needs... is a power that I hope we can cultivate.”