To correct health disparities in eastern North Carolina, providers must take on the difficult task of correcting similar disparities in the makeup of the health care workforce, according to a panel of experts speaking Friday at East Carolina University.

The 13th annualJean Elaine Mills Health Symposium, named for the late ECU alumna and community health administrator who died of breast cancer in 2000, focuses on building partnerships between residents, organizations and ECU faculty and students with the aim of reducing health disparities higher incidences of illness and death in one population group than another.

Where such disparities exist, similar disparities will be found in the workforce population, the educators said. The participants addressed the need for health care workforce equity, which allows care providers to better reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

This symposium is all about student success, community outreach and the transformation of Eastern North Carolina, event moderator Dean Robert Orlikoff of the ECUCollege of Allied Health Sciences, which hosted the daylong symposium, said.Frankly, we have a long way to go. We have to not only serve that community, but be a part of it. Our health care workers must be representative of the communities that they work in and serve.

Beth Velde,assistant dean for special projects at the college and Mills Symposium director, said the symposium is a community/university partnership that does things with, rather than for or to, the communities it serves.

The symposium featured a panel discussion and keynote presentations by Dr. Kendall Campbell, associate dean for diversity and inclusion and director of the Research Group for Underrepresented Minorities in Academic Medicine at East Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine, and Dr. Brenda E. Armstrong, associate dean for admissions at the Duke University School of Medicine.

Amos Mills, who founded the symposium in his late sisters memory, said most people do not understand that health care disparities affect all people across racial, cultural and political lines.

North Carolina should not rank 43rd in the U.S. for health care disparities while it ranks 10th in manufacturing, Mills said.I hope we will bring what we learn to the greater community so we can break down some of the barriers that exist in this state. I fear for the future if we dont address this problem now.

Campbell described equality as giving everybody the same things.

I decided that Im going to buy everybody here a new pair of shoes... and theyre all going to be Size 6, he said.

Equity, on the other hand, provides what someone needs based on an assessment of that persons specific needs, Campbell said.

Campbell quoted Dr. Camara Jones, president of the American Public Health Association,whose work focuses on the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation.

Achieving health equity requires valuing all individuals and populations equally, recognizing and rectifying historical injustices, and providing resources according to need, Jones said. Based on that, healthcare workforce equity assures conditions that allow for the best possible health for all people.

Campbell said action must be intentional to correct the current system that structures health care workforce opportunity based on social interpretation of how a person looks. Such systems including sexism, classism and racism are institutionally designed to separate and unfairly disadvantage some people while giving an unfair advantage to others.

The solution to institutional inequity is diversity, Campbell said.

Student and faculty diversity is indispensable for quality medical education, he said.Diversity of the physician workforce improves access to care for underserved populations; diversity of the research workforce can accelerate advances in medical and public health research; and diversity among managers of health care is good business sense.

Contact Michael Abramowitz at mabramowitz@reflector.comor 252-329-9507.

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Better health needs a diverse workforce - Greenville Daily Reflector