The MetroHealth board will consider dropping the words “diversity” and “equity” from the name of one of its committees — two words that President Donald Trump’s administration has been trying to root out from public agencies, corporations and universities.
The Heath Equity and Diversity Committee voted this week to name itself the Population and Community Health Committee. That recommendation now goes to the full board of trustees.
The committee’s proposed new charter uses different language than the old one does to describe its work. Gone is the term “health disparities,” which often refers to racial inequalities in health and healthcare.
Instead, the charter now talks about “reducing variations among groups and improving health outcomes for all, with additional focus on groups whose outcomes fall statistically significantly outside benchmark ranges.”
In an email to Signal Cleveland explaining the name change, hospital system spokesperson Dorsena Koonce pointed to federal mandates:
As many other healthcare systems, universities and research institutions are doing, MetroHealth continues to take steps to ensure compliance with recent federal mandates and will ensure we are following all laws, rules and guidelines that are implemented.
We remain committed to providing the highest quality healthcare and community-focused services to the patients of Northeast Ohio, as we have for almost 200 years. The revised name accurately communicates the committee’s role in supporting MetroHealth’s mission of delivering innovative and impactful care for all. It also acknowledges the need to holistically address the social, psychological and physical factors that can impact the health of individuals and the community as a whole.
Dr. Srinivas Merugu, who leads MetroHealth’s Institute for H.O.P.E., said at this week’s committee meeting that the committee’s mission hadn’t changed, even if the words of its charter did. He said that health disparities can come in many forms: race, income, source of payment or geographic location, for instance.
“By explicitly calling that out and saying that when we raise those populations which are lagging farthest behind, we raise all boats, and that’s going to be a fundamental element of how we are thinking about population health overall,” he said.
Update: An earlier version of this story referred to MetroHealth’s “Institute for H.O.P.E.2.” The hospital system briefly used the number 2 to denote that there were two Es in the institute’s name, standing for empowerment and equity. The institute no longer uses the number 2.
Celia Hack contributed reporting.
