I am Kendell LeBray. I am the director of quality improvement and health equity. My purpose is to work to advance health equity. And what health equity means is, it's like that North Star, that goal that we want to get to where all individuals have a just and fair opportunity to achieve optimal health.
How can HCSC advance health equity?
LeBray: We're really striving to get to a place where every individual, whether it be from a certain racial ethnic group, whether it be from a certain sexual orientation, gender identity group, whether it be someone who lives in rural America, whether it be some of our veterans, whoever that individual is — and I'm leaving out a lot — but whoever that individual is, they have access to care and we are working to aggressively make sure that they can achieve their optimal health through the services, programs, and resources that we are providing as an organization.
How did you become involved in this work?
LeBray: I'm from Louisiana. I was born in New Orleans. I was raised in a rural town that is actually equidistant between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It's called the River Parishes, but it's also called cancer alley. The stretch is heavily populated by a Black and unfortunately poor population. And so it was growing up as a kid, you know, seeing a lot of my classmates developing asthma, seeing a lot of my classmates' parents who are no longer with us dying of cancer. And so from an environmental racism perspective, I became involved.
As someone who has worked in public health for most of my career., it's a true passion of mine, and it's something that I try to convey when engaging with, whether it be C-suite individuals or whether it be the individuals I like to call the experts on the ground, who are working within different communities.
How is HCSC promoting health equity as a priority?
LeBray: I'm really excited about our Journey to Health Equity health equity awareness campaign that we're about to launch to really home in on this theory, or this thought process, that health equity is all of us.
It's just not individuals in the quality improvement and health equity team. It's the care managers, it's our sales team. It's our chief medical officers. It's our providers. It's all of us. It's the individuals who interact on a daily basis with our members. It's the individuals who make the policy decisions. It's our team who's really working in the field to garner business for us as an organization. Health equity is all of us.
How is HCSC educating employees and network providers about health equity?
LeBray: We're really building on this foundation, the foundation of increasing awareness, increasing consciousness, and as part of that, we want to make sure that we are creating these educational opportunities for our employees and our providers.
We're refreshing the health equity training course for our employees. And we're also making available, which I'm excited about in the coming months, an opportunity for our employees and our providers to get no cost CME and CEU training that will really extend on providing them the necessary tools and resources to better prepare them to engage and meet the needs of our diverse population.
