As a transgender male, Eka Otu has experienced embarrassment, shame and confusion nearly every time he has sought health care.
“I’ve had to be my own advocate,” the 38-year-old Southern Californian says. “I’ve had to beg, stomp and cry to get the care I’ve needed.”
Earlier this month, Otu spoke at a summit on the state of health equity at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He discussed his journey through an out-of-state health system that often seemed designed to discourage diverse patients like him.
The Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Diversity and Inclusion, led by James Page, chief diversity officer, and Eloiza Domingo-Snyder, deputy chief diversity officer, hosted the two-hour event in the Chevy Chase Bank Auditorium. More than 100 leaders from across the health system came together to identify and close any gaps blocking the equal treatment of all patients regardless of their race, ethnicity, language, gender identity or sexual orientation.
The meeting addressed health disparities both nationally and locally. Across the United States, African-Americans are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic whites to have diabetes. Latinos are more than twice as likely to have HIV as non-Hispanic whites. And substance abuse, suicide and violence risks are far higher in the LGBTQ community than in the heterosexual population.
Page pointed to a 2013 Baltimore City Health Department statistic that people in the city’s wealthiest neighborhood live, on average, 14 years longer than Baltimoreans in the least wealthy neighborhoods.
“It’s not by coincidence that those neighborhoods are poor and African-American,” says Page.
The summit also addressed how Johns Hopkins can better collect demographic data from patients in order to assess health equity at Johns Hopkins and find ways to improve it.
Lisa DeCamp, who serves as director of diversity, inclusion and health equity as well as co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Salud/Health and Opportunity for Latinos, detailed a strategy for collecting such information and analyzing it.
Page says providing all patients with equitable treatment “is in our DNA at Johns Hopkins.” He noted that the 1873 obituary of the institution’s founder said philanthropist Johns Hopkins “despised all sectarianism and bigotry.”
Renee Demski, the interim head of patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine, likened the health equity efforts to a similar push to improve patient safety at Johns Hopkins.
“Just like safety problems, health disparities are not inevitable,” Demski said. “We’re poised as a community to take the next step.”
According to Domingo-Snyder, improving health equity at Johns Hopkins Medicine has three strategic areas: leadership, performance monitoring and program building. At the enterprise level, stakeholders will engage via a health equity steering committee comprised of health equity champions from each entity and health system leaders.