Vision for equity and justice in medicine
Vision for equity and justice in medicine
The American Medical Association (AMA) is the nation's largest professional association of physicians. It is the physicians’ powerful ally in patient care, promoting the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health. Rooted in a history of advocacy and guided by a vision of a more equitable future, the AMA recognizes the urgent need to address historical and contemporary injustices within the health care system.
Advancing health equity through the AMA's efforts entails a dedicated, coordinated and honest approach. It recognizes the harmful effects of the AMA’s past and targets the systemic inequities in the health care ecosystem. Toward that goal, the AMA released a plan to chart a path toward a more promising and equitable future for all.
This is the AMA’s second health equity strategic plan dedicated to advancing health equity. Read the AMA leadership viewpoint reaffirming the association's commitment to health equity.
Origins of strategic plan
The origins of this strategic plan date back to the AMA’s Annual House of Delegates meeting in June of 2018. In this meeting, the time-limited Health Equity Task Force—appointed by the chair of the AMA Board of Trustees—presented to the AMA House of Delegates Board Report 33, A-18, a “Plan for Continued Progress Toward Health Equity D-180.981” (PDF).
In April of 2019, the AMA launched the AMA Center for Health Equity with the hiring of its first chief health equity officer.
In 2021, the AMA announced its first strategic plan to embed racial justice and advance health equity. This plan was a three-year roadmap to plant the initial seeds for action and accountability to embed racial justice and advance health equity for years to come. Read the progress updates for each of the three years.
The 2024-2025 plan (PDF) serves as a direct extension of the 2021–2023 strategic plan. Together, the two documents detail the AMA’s health equity strategy over a five-year period.
Roadmap following 5 strategic approaches
Roadmap following 5 strategic approaches
With the input of many both inside and outside of the AMA, this strategic plan serves as a roadmap of the first strategic plan to promote action and accountability to advance health equity for years to come. The AMA will initiate and push forward these five strategic approaches:
1. Embed equity: Infuse racial equity and social justice into fabric of AMA's culture, systems, policies, practices
- Implement and monitor enterprise-wide health equity goals and performance metrics using an Anti-Racist Results-Based Accountability (AR-RBA) framework
- Identify more opportunities to align and synergize mission and membership initiatives
- Strengthen efforts to assess AMA Federation and House of Delegates’ awareness and utilization of equity products and overall engagement with equity initiatives
2. Build alliances and share power: Acknowledge, learn from voices and experiences of historically marginalized, minoritized physicians and stakeholders
- Continue to convene and provide grants to support minoritized and marginalized physician groups’ efforts to promote increased representation in medicine
- Support medical students and physicians experiencing discrimination in their schools and workplaces
- Prevent and reduce the burden of chronic disease by reaching five million patients with hypertension to lower their blood pressure
- Bolster the work of Federally Qualified Health Centers by providing supported physician education opportunities and tools to better understand the health of their communities
3. Ensure equity in innovation: Integrate racial justice, health equity into health care innovation efforts, amplifying voices of historically marginalized individuals
- Increase the size, success and impact of the In Full Health community
- Gather and publish data to advance the cause of equitable health care innovations
- Celebrate health equity innovation early adopters and collaborations, centering people from minoritized and marginalized communities
4. Push upstream: Address all determinants of health and underlying causes of inequities across health care ecosystem
- Participate in networks and coalitions that take action to eliminate root causes of health inequities
- Transform medical education at all levels to focus on preparing physicians to track, monitor, and address social determinants of health as a key part of patient care
- Continue to expand the use of an equity lens to all of AMA’s advocacy work, with current priorities including maternal child health and reproductive care, gender-affirming care, Medicaid expansion, harmful race-based clinical algorithms and augmented intelligence
- Expand educational offerings to include foundational content on ableism in health care, together with strategies to advance disability justice in medicine
5. Foster pathways: Amplify marginalized narratives, quantify past harms, embark on healing journey for transformative change
- Strengthen physician, health system and AMA member and staff engagement
- Gather and learn from testimonies on the implications of historical harms on contemporary health inequities from physicians, health providers, health equity advocates, and marginalized patient populations
- Promote shared learning of AMA’s history using archival research, centering marginalized and minoritized narratives
Educational primers
Educational primers
In the spirit of demonstrating a commitment to lifelong learning by continuing to seek new knowledge and approaches, this strategic plan includes educational primers. These primers cover some of the topics that have demanded the AMA's attention over the last few years and will help guide the AMA's work in the coming years. These include:
Related educational resources
