A group of committed workforce members created the Health Equity and Anti-Racism Action Plan to prioritize the most powerful actions to address systemic racism within Seattle Children’s from late 2021 through 2024.
At Seattle Children’s, anti-racism means that we actively identify, challenge and change the culture, structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism. Being anti-racist requires urgency and stamina.
Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing barriers to health including access to quality, equitable healthcare. Learn more.
The Seattle Children’s Health Equity and Anti-Racism Action Plan has eight outcome measures for fiscal year 2023. Learn more about Seattle Children’s commitments over the next few years.
Update Seattle Children’s values to include anti-racism to hold leaders and workforce accountable through the performance evaluation process.
After compiling feedback from the HEDI Council and Inclusion Network leaders, updates were made to values-based behaviors and leadership qualities to incorporate anti-racism. The updates were approved by the Executive Leadership Team in July 2022. The updated values-based behaviors and leadership qualities will be introduced in March 2023 and incorporated into FY23 performance evaluations with a focus on accountability.
Link executive compensation to achievement of Action Plan outcomes.
The Board approved FY23 executive compensation goals in September 2022, which will continue the same model of 16% of executive compensation being linked to achievement of equity-related goals. Final goal achievement will be determined on September 30, 2023, and executive compensation based upon those results.
The Behavioral Response Project will replace Code Purple with an equitable and anti-racist structure that is co-created with patients and families to ensure it is culturally responsive and provides psychosocial support.
Finalized implementation plan and training for the launch of the new Adaptive Social Response system, which replaced Code Purple in early Q2.
Increase employee diversity by race/ethnicity by 3% to 43.4% through hiring and retention strategies to further reflect Seattle Children’s patient population.
The FY23 goal of 43.4% racial and ethnic diversity is tracked through quarterly milestones. The Q1 goal of 41.2% was not met with a result of 41%. Ongoing work to increase employee diversity is an org-wide effort and it is important to follow inclusive and equitable hiring practices as we move forward in reaching our goals. A Director of Retention and Engagement was hired to support our focus on retention and to improve onboarding and integration of new workforce members.
Achieve score of 81.5% and obtain national race, ethnicity and language (REaL) benchmark data for the Family Experience Survey (FES) from Press Ganey.
The annual goal is set to be attainable by the end of the fiscal year, and results are often red at the beginning of the year. Pediatric experience scores declined in Q1 across peer groups, largely due to the tri-demic of RSV, COVID and flu seasons that continue to impact Emergency Department volumes and wait times.
Decrease overall non-mucosal barrier injury central line associated bloodstream infection (non-MBI CLABSI) rates and eliminate CLABSI disparities. Meet 2 of the 3 components of this goal:
Overall CLABSI rates are trending slightly above target. CLABSI rates for patients who use a language other than English meet the Q1 goal but CLABSI rates for Black and African American patients did not meet the Q1 goal. In order to improve outcomes, central line maintenance bundle training has been completed and central line handout and roadmaps translated into the top five languages.
Stratify Hospital Acquired Conditions (HAC) rate by race, ethnicity and language (REaL) and maintain or decrease baseline rate of 2.23.
Finalized the new outcome measure on Hospital Acquired Conditions (HAC), which expands the focus of harm reduction to include 9 types of hospital-acquired harm. In Q1, the HAC rate was successfully stratified by race, ethnicity and language and will be used to identify disparities and inform quality improvement efforts.
Increase enrollment of diverse research participants by 3% to 34% relative to FY22 to further reflect Seattle Children’s patient population.
Identified focus areas for the new outcome measure focused on increasing research participant diversity including Research Language Office utilization, improvement of demographic data collection, potential data dashboard transition and reconciliation of data discrepancy.
Beginning December 2021, Seattle Children’s released Action Plan progress updates on a quarterly basis. Although the plan was released less than a year ago, some areas are showing measurable impact. Other areas require establishing the connections and structure needed to build toward long-term impact. View the latest progress update.
Seattle Children’s is accountable to the communities it serves. Patients and families are invited to provide feedback on their experience at Seattle Children’s via surveys, and family advisors — parents and caregivers from our community — share their perspectives regularly. We continue to look for opportunities to invite patients and families to help design programs and service delivery to better serve those receiving care. Seattle Children’s workforce and community members also provided feedback on the Action Plan and shared their priorities, and ongoing research tracks parents’ attitudes toward Seattle Children’s.
Progress toward becoming a leader in health equity and changing racist systems requires action by individuals, teams and at the organizational level. Accountability for direction setting and making change lies with leaders, but progress would not be possible without workforce and community members including the Action Plan Task Force; Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Council and committees; and Seattle Children’s Inclusion Networks.