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Health Equity

Our Division of Health Equity is one of the few such deliberately conceived programs in Academic Emergency Medicine. We value universal health care equitably accessible to everyone, and our Health Equity Division uses this principle to inform our patient care, training, advocacy, community partnerships, and scholarship. The Rush Department of Emergency Medicine recognizes that the structural inequities in our broken healthcare system are pervasive in our communities and are tragically visible in the Emergency Department. We are uniquely positioned to recognize structural racism and unequal social determinants of health. This compels us to effect change and reduce these disparities by approaching everything we do through the lens of health equity. We do this by:

  • Programs: Our faculty demonstrate expertise in health justice, addiction medicine and substance use disorder, social emergency medicine, global health, trauma informed care, psychiatric emergencies and mental health access, community engagement, street medicine, interpersonal and sexual violence, immigration and asylum health, and health equity informatics. Our programs include inpatient and outpatient substance use intervention teams, trauma-informed care programsand immigration health outreach programs for asylum seekers
  • People: We invest in training the next generation of health equity experts, and support our faculty engaged in this work. Our training programs include fellowships in Health Equity and Social Emergency Medicine, Behavioral Health Emergencies, and Addiction Medicine. Our residency training program specifically teaches social and global medicine and anti-racism practices. Our faculty teach community-based CPR, medical student programs in health justice, and mentor students at all levels who come from backgrounds considered to be underrepresented in medicine. 

  • Policies: Our departmental policies start with addressing questions of health equity. Our team screens for social determinants of health from the moment of arrival throughout their ED stay, and strives to connect patients with resources that matter. Our department works to identify our own biases and disrupt racist policies that prevent our patients from achieving the health they deserve.

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    Dissanayake Rush prof pose

Vinodinee Dissanayake, MD, MPH
Director, Division of Health Equity