Inside All Care

All Care is Looking AHEAD

  • By Kerri Hodges

All Care Health Center’s mission is to provide affordable, comprehensive, high-quality healthcare to the entire community. The phrase “entire community” is inclusive of all ethnicities, income levels, ages, and sexual orientations; it includes everyone. Healthcare access disparities put lives at risk. All Care aims to eliminate any unintended barriers to access related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

All Care, alongside the Iowa Primary Care Association (IPCA), began its formal journey toward health equity and DEI during the 2019 IPCA Strategic Planning. This work includes a network-wide plan to help health centers set and complete goals toward becoming equitable organizations.

All Care kicked off its DEI work this past year with the AHEAD (Advancing Health Equity and Addressing Disparities) project.

The AHEAD work supports five deliverables:

1) Health Equity Needs Assessment

2) A Unified Health Equity Implementation Plan

3) Data Support

4) Strategic Consultation to Support DEI & Health Equity Implementation

5) Health Equity Training, Education, & Support.

As a part of AHEAD work, Melyna Avalos became the All Care DEI Officer. She participates in monthly educational and peer learning sessions and oversees the All Care DEI Committee. This committee created a formal DEI Statement:

“At All Care Health Center, we celebrate the similarities and differences reflected in our workforce and patients. We aim to create and foster a fair, healthy, and high-performing organization/culture/atmosphere to provide affordable, comprehensive, and high quality healthcare services to meet the needs of the diverse community that we serve. Taking deliberate actions to remove systemic, group, and individual barriers and obstacles that hinder opportunities to provide the best healthcare is our purpose.”

In 2022, All Care completed in-person informant interviews and a health equity needs assessment survey. This year, work will support themes addressed in that survey via learning moments in our all-staff meetings to address growth, learning, and discomfort and to inspire further DEI conversations. All Care has implemented high-level DEI initiatives into our 2023 – 2025 strategic plan to further our DEI initiative.