Health Equity Summit
Due to coronavirus, the 2020 Health Equity Summit has been postponed to a later date. Please subscribe to Health Equity Email Updates to be notified when the new date has been scheduled.
The inaugural Health Equity Summit was held in 2019 as a partnership between the Center for Health Equity, the Health Equity Leadership Network (HELN), and the Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative (EHDI). The annual event is designed to bring 
together health equity leaders and champions from across Minnesota communities to connect, strengthen and amplify our collective efforts.
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2020 Health Equity Summit
2019 Health Equity Summit
2020 Health Equity Summit
Original Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2020*
Time: 8 am - 4 pm
Location: Midpointe Event Center, 415 Pascal St N, St Paul, MN 55104
*Due to coronavirus, the 2020 Health Equity Summit has been postponed to a later date. Please subscribe to Health Equity Email Updates to be notified when the new date has been scheduled.
Since the inaugural Summit in March 2019, we've been learning from HELN members what health and racial equity efforts are happening across the state. Building on this learning and the 2019 summit, the 2020 summit will feature a health equity innovation lab, where participants will experiment with human-centered design to identify innovations to advance health equity.
Optum Advisory Services consultants, who are engaged in this project through the Optum Pro-Bono Consulting Program, are helping to design the innovation lab and coach selected teams to host lab stations throughout the day. Participants will walk away with new skills in how to leverage human-centered design for health equity as well as new partnerships to move the work forward.
Summit Goals
- Co-design actionable strategies that address upstream factors impacting health equity (as outlined in the Health Equity 2019 Summit Overview on pages 12-14)
- Leverage human-centered design to advance health equity through cross-sector partnerships
- Ignite relationships across sectors, communities and areas of expertise
Innovation Lab
In January, the Health Equity Summit steering committee opened a call for ideas from across the state on how to advance health equity through cross-sector collaboration. The ideas submitted address the ideologies, barriers and contributors/indicators to health equity (as outlined in the Health Equity 2019 Summit Overview on pages 12-14). Below is a visual of this framework:
The Health Equity Summit steering committee has selected eight ideas that align with the goals of the summit. Optum and steering committee members are currently working with those individuals/teams to prepare them to host innovation lab stations during the summit. Teams will be provided with a facilitator to help move through the human-centered design process during the innovation lab. There is the potential for small seed funds (approximately $2,000 to $5,000 activation grants) to be distributed to teams who are ready to pilot their ideas after the summit.
What is human-centered design?
Human-center design (HCD) is a creative approach to problem solving that is rooted in a deep understanding of those most impacted by that problem. Ideo.org provides a useful overview of HCD. You do not need to know anything about HCD to participate.
Sponsors
A big thank you to our sponsors: Blue Cross Blue Shield Center for Prevention, University of Minnesota Program in Health Disparities Research, Minnesota Department of Human Services, and M Health Fairview. Thank you also to Optum's Pro-Bono Consulting Program for your support in coaching teams and hosting the innovation lab.
2019 Health Equity Summit
On March 26, 2019, CHE hosted the inaugural Health Equity Summit in partnership with HELN and the 2016-2019 cohort of Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative (EHDI) grantees. The summit brought together 220 leaders from across sectors, geographies, communities and experiences. The theme of the summit was: “Strengthening the Web: Building Our Networks to Activate Health Equity”.
Co-sponsors included the Blue Cross Blue Shield Center for Prevention; the Minnesota Department of Human Services; the University of Minnesota Program in Health Disparities Research; and the Catalyst Initiative at the Minneapolis Foundation.
The goals of the summit were to:
- Connect - Build connections to others advancing health equity in Minnesota
- Strengthen – Begin mapping connections and gaps in who is doing what throughout the state
- Amplify - Leverage collective power to think differently about what is needed and what is possible to advance health equity in our state
Check out the 2019 Health Equity Summit Overview to learn more about the summit and read the notes from participant discussions throughout the day.
