Equity of Care: Best Practices for Building Leadership Diversity Programs
This worksheet looks at best practices for building leadership diversity programs through various case studies. Cases vary by career level and touch on topics such as hiring for new roles and diversity committees.
Building a diverse leadership team requires commitment, time and a variety of best practices. Diversity practices that best fit a health care organization will be highly customized to the organization’s governance, culture and community needs. Through self-examination, hospital and health care system leaders can identify blind spots and match best practices to address those areas. Each best practice can be molded to fit different career levels within the organization, though some best practices may be more appropriate for one or more levels. Best practices being used by hospitals and health care systems include mentoring programs, partnerships with educational groups, and internal diversity committees, described with examples in the table “Best Practices for Building Leadership Diversity Programs.” In addition to commitment and time, allocating funds such as tuition reimbursement or seed money is important to support formal mentoring programs and fellowships.