The CHE brings together health equity experts whose initiatives align with our four core workstreams: Community Translation, Clinical Quality and Safety, Advocacy and Social Justice, and Research and Education. By creating and supporting programs committed to understanding the barriers to health equity, we work with our partners and colleagues to achieve our ultimate goal of ensuring every child in Philadelphia has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.

Community translation core: “Boots on the ground”

Through partnerships with key community stakeholders, we implement evidence-based interventions that show promise to reduce disparities and help sustain the impact of these interventions long term. Our colleagues are building safer and healthier environments throughout Philadelphia. Examples include:

• Community of Compassion CDC: Community of Compassion CDC has hosted quarterly Community Health Partnership Clinics. These clinics aim to break down silos and promote connections where necessary to deliver requested services in a holistic, patient- and family-centered way. They are co-designed to be able to meet identified needs by the church and surrounding community.
• Complete Eats: This partnership between CHOP, the USDA and the Nutritional Development Services serves free summer meals to kids at the point of clinical care and connects families with other social resources and free meal locations in their communities.
• Medical Financial Partnership (MFP): MFP leverages collaborations between Philadelphia financial organizations (Campaign for Working Families; Clarifi) and CHOP to implement services that improve both the health and financial well-being of the community. Services include free tax preparation, financial counseling and benefits connections.

Clinical quality and safety core: “No harm, equitable care”

We seek opportunities to eliminate health disparities and assure health equity across the CHOP enterprise. Equity is everyone’s work. The CHE seeks to increase organizational capacity to rigorously capture and track key health equity metrics in order to target resources and hold ourselves to the highest standards. To address equity gaps, we look to support piloting, implementing, scaling and dissemination of solutions. Examples of partners’ initiatives include:

• Center for Violence Prevention (CVP): CVP promotes firearm safety across CHOP primary care and throughout the surrounding community. Through conducting community-focused research and designing evidence-based programs, we strive to create safer schools and neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.
• STOP Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Program: This CHOP taskforce, created through a partnership between CHOP and Lutheran Settlement House Bilingual Domestic Violence Program, seeks to address teen dating violence and intimate partner violence, with a focus on child abuse and effects of community violence on individuals and families.

Advocacy and social justice core: “Speak truth to power”

We identify opportunities to advocate for racial justice and health equity and to cultivate community partnerships to drive change in healthcare. Our partners are working to ensure equity-focused measures are implemented across Philadelphia’s communities. Examples include:

• Community Pediatrics & Advocacy Program (CPAP): CHOP’s Pediatrics Residency Program trains the next generation of physician leaders. The CPAP curriculum provides foundational learning for all of CHOP’s residents. Residents are introduced to legislative advocacy and make connections in the local community with key internal and external community partners.
• CHOP Government Affairs: The Government Affairs team at CHOP is dedicated to advocating for the children of Philadelphia through impacting and leading legislative and regulative changes within pediatric care. Through working with different levels of government, Government Affairs seeks to acknowledge and address the key issues affecting the health statuses and outcomes of Philadelphia’s children.
• Children's First: Children’s First is dedicated to ensuring every child has access to high-quality care and the means to carry out a healthy lifestyle essential for growth and development. Via collaboration with community, research and government organizations, Children’s First hopes to ensure every child has an opportunity to maximize their childhood in order to set them up for a healthy and successful future.

Research and education core: “Nothing about us without us”

We are committed to ensuring the community voice is represented in research, and that research is conducted using a health equity and antiracist approach. We look to reconceptualize the research process, both through national thought leadership (Best Practices for the Conduct of Antiracist Research) and leading local practice changes (Anti-Racism Training and Programming). We are honored to partner with those at CHOP doing this work, including:

• SECURE: This is a randomized controlled trial created through a partnership between CHOP Primary Care, Social Work, the CHOP Emergency Department and Community Resource Connects (an organization that works toward addressing social determinants of health through connecting children and families to tools that help support their well-being) for the purpose of better understanding family preferences around social care and social needs assessments.