Off the Charts: Examining the Health Equity Emergency

As the director of web and mobile digital accessibility at HealthPartners, Steve Sawczyn leads a team dedicated to making health care simple and accessible for everyone. Steve, who is blind, has used his own experiences to inspire his team’s accessibility work and says he has learned to challenge what people say is impossible.

Statistics show that women and communities of color are less likely to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation after cardiac arrest. Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah is the emergency medical services director at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and co-founder of Akoma United, an organization with the mission to save lives, especially in communities of color, and goal to empower everyday people to use CPR. She shares why it's important and reminds us that there’s no liability when doing CPR.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to chronic-pain management. Each person’s story is unique and requires individualized care that often includes non-opioid therapies. Sara Hall, a clinical nurse specialist in pain management at Regions Hospital, shares how a 2020 grant helped her team develop a yoga program that’s more accessible for Spanish-speaking patients with chronic pain.

Stephanie Zahrbock suddenly lost all sensation and the ability to move or feel anything below her belly button in 2016 when a lesion was discovered on her spine. The former runner shares how her world changed and how solutions to her challenges can benefit everyone.

It’s important to understand that equity, the quality of being fair and impartial, means we don’t all start from the same place. Equity in the workplace starts with commitment and alignment. Rhonda Cox, vice president of people and culture for Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation, shares why equity’s important to her and what inspired her to want to shape, create and influence workplace culture to be more inclusive and equitable for colleagues.