Health Equity

Overview

In 2022, Stanford Biodesign adopted a new purpose:

Advancing health outcomes and equity
through innovation education, translation, and policy.

For more than 20 years, we focused primarily on training technology innovators to make the world a healthier place by positively affecting patient outcomes. But now, as we position Stanford Biodesign for its next 20 years, we have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to cultivate a new generation of leaders who also understand how health technology can be leveraged to expand access and catalyze greater health equity for all.

The World Health Organization defines health equity as “the absence of unfair, avoidable, or remediable [health] differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically, or by other dimensions of inequality (e.g., sex, gender, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation).” Health is a fundamental human right, and health equity is achieved when everyone can attain their full potential for health and well-being in alignment with the United Nation’s sustainable development goal 3.

Achieving health equity will require a multi-layered, system-based approach. We believe that technology innovation will be an important part of the solution – and this is where we can help make a difference. Every technology developed has the potential to either widen or narrow the gap in access to equitable care. Accordingly, we are committed to training more intentional innovators who understand how their decisions affect health equity as they identify and characterize unmet needs, invent solutions, and implement new technologies into patient care.

Our vision at Stanford Biodesign is to embed health equity across our portfolio of educational programs, reaching more than 500 individuals each year. Infusing health equity-oriented considerations, tools, and support into every step of the core innovation process we teach will allow us to make more intentional, inclusive design integral to how the next generation of Biodesign innovators think and act.

Learn more about Stanford Biodesign’s Health Equity Program

To support this work, our aspirations include:

1. Attracting applicants from varied backgrounds – Health equity is not only about equitable access to care on the patient side. It also involves creating opportunities for a broad array of people to become health technology innovators. Starting with our flagship program, the 10-month full-time Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship, we are expanding our recruitment efforts to engage a wider spectrum of applicants. Inclusive design thrives on participation from innovators who reflect the communities they intend to serve. We are working to actively continue attracting more women, under-represented minorities, and members of other traditionally underserved groups to our teams, so they reflect a diversity of lived experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives.
2. Evolving our curriculum – We have begun embedding health equity into our innovation process, which has required a fundamental rethinking of what and how we teach health equity within our training programs. New materials and experiences will continue to be added to raise awareness around rapidly shifting demographics and social determinants of health, as well as alternate business models and funding sources to support projects with a focus on health equity and broader societal impacts.
3. Expanding our community partnerships – Deepening and expanding our community-centered partnerships is critical to increase our effectiveness. These partnerships enable our trainees to interact with patients and providers who face the greatest inequities to understand their needs. They also provide access for co-designing solutions that are culturally sensitive and broadly inclusive. These relationships include community-based health centers, patient advocacy organizations, and local health-related nonprofits.
4. Providing seed funding for health equity projects – In order for any health technology project to succeed, the innovators must substantially derisk the opportunity as a pre-requisite to raising the funds needed to bring their new product into patient care. By offering seed funding to select projects, we aim to narrow an important health equity gap. Such funds would be awarded on a competitive basis to each year’s most promising projects as designated by a panel of objective health technology funders and/or entrepreneurs.

In parallel, we are working hard to create a culture where health equity is top of mind among our trainees, staff, and faculty. Specific efforts intended to build health equity aptitude include:

• Creating and reinforcing a shared understanding of what health equity means at Stanford Biodesign and how we see health equity and innovation intersecting.
• Developing a community guide, which is a dynamic reference document aimed at promoting inclusive language and cultural awareness, and then keeping it current as we learn and evolve our position in the health equity space.
• Deepening our knowledge of population-level health issues and the social determinants of health and using this information to broaden our view of health and healthcare.
• Serving organizations in our local area that are addressing social determinants of health such as Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, whose mission is to end food insecurity.
• Hosting a monthly seminar series that features different health equity-focused speakers on topics such as pediatric and maternal health, impact investing, Medicaid-focused business models, and decolonizing health innovation.

To access case studies, videos, and other learning materials at the intersection of health equity and innovation, visit our health equity resources page.