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Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Resources for assessing the social determinants of health, and actions taken to increase health equity, diversity and inclusion.

Scope

Health equity, diversity and inclusion in healthcare encompasses societal impacts on health, and actions taken to address or mitigate resulting health outcome disparities.

Each section of this guide includes resources and concepts for searching the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, and may be translated to search other databases.

Using the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) as a categorical framework, the Health Care Category includes several factors relating to health care access, organization and administration, and also Population Characteristics as a health care factor. Accordingly, Population Characteristics and Sociological Factors (which includes Socioeconomic Factors and Sociodemographic Factors) in addition to Social Behavior (which includes Altruism, Prejudice, Implicit Bias, etc.) affect Health and Health Status

Interestingly, there is a separate Persons(MeSH) category which describes persons as individuals, while also including groups such as Age Groups(MeSH) and also Health Disparate Minority and Vulnerable Populations(MeSH) containing intersecting terms shared between concept categories.

For an in-depth introduction, see this 2023 report: Conceptualizing the Mechanisms of Social Determinants of Health: A Heuristic Framework to Inform Future Directions for Mitigation. 


This guide aims to connect related concepts for further research and exploration. See also these related guides:

  • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion research guide for resources related to implementing DE&I within higher education
  • Oral Health Equity resources for oral health equity, social determinants, and health disparities in dental education and practice
  • Health Statistics guide for health statistics by type, location, population, and health topic.

Acknowledgements

Several library research guides were reviewed for inspiration. Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services' Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Ohio State University Health Sciences Library DEIA Guide, Indiana University Medical School Ruth Lilly Medical Library's Health Equity,  UNLV's Racism in Medicine and Healthcare, New York City College of Technology's Anti-Oppression Resources,