Industry Insight

Luminis Health Board of Trustees Adopts 10 Health Equity, Antiracism Recommendations

October Is Global Diversity Awareness Month

Luminis Health has released a bold plan to become a national model for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI).

The groundwork for the plan began in 2020 with the formation of the health system’s Health Equity and Anti-Racism Task (HEART) Force, a multidisciplinary group consisting of members of the boards of trustees, senior leaders, medical staff, community partners, and stakeholders. The events of 2020 prompted Luminis Health to assess data and information to identify greater opportunity to effect change in confronting racism, addressing the effects of systemic inequity, and dismantling structural injustice.

“The future of health equity calls for organizations like ours to take bold action to dismantle structural and social drivers of racial and ethnic disparities in all of its forms. Luminis Health is committed to exactly that,” says Victoria Bayless, CEO of Luminis Health. “These recommendations will be intentionally woven into who we are as a system and a part of what we do every day to better serve our workforce and enhance the health of our patients and communities.”

The recommendations are structured by the following three major categories:

1. Lead as an antiracist organization, confront racism, and eradicate inequities in health care.
2. Enhance culturally informed communications and community collaboration.
3. Measure and integrate accountability.

The recommendations outline the following 10 strategic approaches to begin tackling these challenges:

• Confront racism and embody principles of an antiracist organization in policy, culture, and performance.
• Eliminate health disparities and improve health outcomes of diverse communities.
• Become a trusted partner in diverse communities through a formalized community network.
• Become a diversity, equity, and inclusion thought leader in Maryland and in health care nationally by hiring and retaining a diverse workforce.
• Establish culturally customized care as the formal standard of quality.
• Share the Luminis Health JEDI journey with diverse populations by incorporating into the Luminis Health brand.
• Extend current diversity, equity, and inclusion reporting and programs effectively across the system.
• Establish minority business enterprise/supplier diversity goals and partner with local minority businesses, vendors, and suppliers.
• Develop a sustainable accountability model.
• Integrate specific JEDI focus into the board governance structure.

Put forth by Luminis Health’s HEART Force, cochaired by Randy Rowel, PhD, an associate professor and director of the Why Culture Matters Disaster Studies Project at Morgan State University, and Alicia Wilson, a social justice advocate, the recommendations were unanimously approved by the boards of trustees and adopted by the health system in June.

“The time is now for swift and progressive action to confront racism and eradicate inequities in health care and beyond,” says Tamiko Stanley, vice president and chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at Luminis Health. “At Luminis Health, we are committed to comprehensively evaluating our processes, policies, and practices to move toward meaningful change within our organization and in the communities we serve. Driven by accountability and transparency, our plan will light Luminis Health’s path to the next level of excellence in our diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice journey.”

“Racism undoubtedly contributes to health inequity. These pervasive and systemic issues require multiple simultaneous and ongoing actions to eliminate them,” says Reverend Stephen Tillett, of Asbury Broadneck Methodist Church and HEART Force member. “By adopting these 10 bold recommendations, Luminis Health can put into motion a new and lasting plan to guide the changes that we must undertake to foster a space for equity to prevail.”

— Source: Luminis Health

Organization Launches National Workplace Equity Initiative

The Black Women’s Health Imperative recently launched a national antiracism initiative that will tackle workplace inequities in order to improve the health and wellness of Black women.

“Through the development of this multiyear initiative, we will create national standards to transform the experiences of Black women in the workplace and allow them to thrive,” said Linda Goler Blount, president and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative. “We know that each year, Black Americans have over 74,000 more deaths due to health inequities. Chronic stress due to racism affects us on a cellular level. We have to address this public health crisis with more than just conventional diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.”

Black women are less likely to feel supported at work than other groups and far more likely to face racism and gender discrimination. The chronic stress of such discrimination has been well documented as a precursor to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other illnesses.

By implementing evidence-based strategies that account for gender and race, the BWHI aims to create tangible, measurable, long-term change by centering the voices of Black women and their experiences in the workplace. BWHI will build dialogue and partnerships with corporate executives to promote equitable and fair policies and practices in the workplace.

Initial funding for this initiative comes from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which awarded the Black Women’s Health Imperative $1 million as part of its commitment to nonprofits fighting systemic racism.

As part of the campaign, BWHI will create a Corporate Fairness Index identifying workplaces that are fair, equitable, and safe for Black women. Corporations can show their commitment to an antiracist workplace by inviting BWHI to evaluate their policies for inclusion in the Index. BWHI also plans to help corporations implement evidence-based fairness training.

In addition, BWHI will create an Anti-Racism Toolkit for Wellness that will empower Black women to stay well even as they navigate discriminatory workplaces.

“For corporations to create meaningful change, it isn’t enough to simply host an annual implicit bias training,” Goler Blount says. “Real change can only happen when the actual policies and practices that safeguard racism and gender discrimination in the workplace are abolished.”

“The inequities endured by Black women in the workplace are the result of more than 400 years of racism and discrimination,” says Angelica Geter, chief strategy officer of the Black Women’s Health Imperative. “It will take a dedicated, collaborative, and intersectional approach to dismantle systemic racism in the workplace—one that doesn’t just talk the talk, but walks the walk.”

— Source: Black Women’s Health Imperative

Report Reveals How State Income Tax Reforms Can Narrow Income Gaps

A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy outlines how state lawmakers can advance racial equity by reforming their personal income tax, revamping taxes on homeowners and investors, and strengthening tax credits for families.

The report, “State Income Taxes and Racial Equity,” is the second in a series that will examine how state tax codes impact the racial income and wealth gaps and offer policy recommendations for addressing those inequities. Currently, all but five state tax systems are upside down, meaning they tax the top 1% at a lower rate than the poorest 20%. Long-standing economic and social injustices, including unequal access to education and job discrimination, have created an economy in which white families are more likely to thrive and build wealth and be in the highest income brackets. So, state tax systems that rely more on regressive consumption taxes than on progressive income taxes directly contribute to the post-tax racial income gap.

“Addressing racial inequities will require a concerted effort across policy areas at all levels of government,” says Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and an author of the report. “For states, one important component of this effort should be personal income tax reform.”

The report offers the following 10 policy reforms that make tax systems more equitable and begin to address the racial income and wealth gaps:

• levy higher tax rates on top earners;
• tax investment income equitably;
• tax pass-through business income equitably;
• eliminate or restructure retirement tax preferences;
• allow single parents to file as head of household;
• allow local governments to levy a robust personal income tax;
• provide tax credits to renters;
• strengthen tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit (CTC), and the Child and Dependent Care Credit; and
• free up local governments to levy progressive income taxes in lieu of regressive sales taxes, excise taxes, fees, and fines.

At the national level, policymakers are determining whether to increase tax rates on the highest-income households and expand the CTC and EITC so that those programs will provide more help to low-income working people and families with children. Federal policies that address the nation’s deep class and racial economic divisions are part of the solution, but states can step up as well.

The report recommends that state lawmakers look beyond headline tax rates and toward a careful design of income tax bases. For example, equitable taxation of investment income derived from families’ wealth should be a top priority, as almost 90% of the kinds of assets most likely to generate taxable capital gains income are held by white families, and an overwhelmingly share of that is held by a small slice of white families at the very top. States can also build on success at the federal levels (some states already have) by using refundable tax credits to lift families with lower incomes.

“The nation is having a critically important conversation about systemic racism and the role our public policies have played in exacerbating racial inequities,” says Marco Guzman, a coauthor of the report. “Decades of policies and social practices have created deeply unequal outcomes for Black and brown communities compared to their white counterparts. Tax policy is not a singular solution to this deep social challenge. But by examining data and understanding how the tax system exacerbates class- and race-based inequities and then crafting policies to remedy those inequities, tax policy can be part of the solution.”

— Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy