Health Equity
Mid-State Health Network's Commitment to Health Equity
Mid-State Health Network is committed to finding intentional ways to achieve better equity in our organization and in our region, to diversify our workforce, stakeholders, and service participants, to grow in our understanding and inclusion of all residents of Region 5, and to eliminate bias, discrimination, and health disparities in the healthcare services we exist to support.
In 2023, Mid-State Health Network (MSHN) launched its Equity Upstream Lecture Series & Learning Collaborative to Reduce Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Opioid Overdose Deaths. The lecture series included national experts who brought nuanced perspectives on the landscape of SUD health disparities with an overview of epidemiological trends in the overdose epidemic, as well as what’s known about why disparities exist: systemic racism, implicit bias, access barriers, mistrust of the medical system, and cultural issues specific to historically marginalized populations. Click below to see recordings of each of the trainings.
For additional background on MSHN's Equity Upstream initiative, please see below. To learn more about MSHN's diversity, equality, and inclusion efforts in Region 5, please reach out to Dr. Dani Meier at dani.meier@midstatehealthnetwork.org.
Equity Upstream Lecture Series
When Systems Damage People: Anti-Racism Lessons for Battling the Opioid Epidemic
Click above for Dr. Jones' Lecture
Building Health Equity: A Social Justice Approach to the Opioid Epidemic in Hispanic/Latiné Communities
Click above for Dr. Hernandez' Lecture
Culturally Based Approaches to Addiction & Recovery in Indigenous Communities
Click above for Dr. Warne's Lecture
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Opioid Crisis: A Perspective from SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity
Click above for Dr. Huang's Lecture
The Equity Upstream Initiative:
In a well-known parable (credited to medical sociologist Irving Zola), a villager is standing by a river where people on the verge of drowning are floating downstream. The villager is joined by neighbors who pull each drowning person from the water, but they are quickly overwhelmed. At first, the urgency of the moment occupies the villagers' focus as they save lives one by one. Realizing that's not sustainable, however, a group of villagers goes upstream to identify why people keep falling into the river in the first place and what can be done to address that and to eliminate the source of the crisis.
In the wake of stark racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes spotlighted by the COVID pandemic, Mid-State Health Network (MSHN) responded to the moral imperative to take action by accelerating its efforts to apply an equity lens to the broad scope of its oversight of the public behavioral health system in our 21-county region of Michigan, and to look upstream rather than just treating the symptoms downstream.
Towards that end, MSHN has been offering trainings since 2021 on health disparities and systemic barriers to health equity. These trainings evolved into the Equity Upstream Initiative which launched in April 2023 with the spring lecture series linked above.
Beyond increasing understanding of upstream systemic issues, however, the intent of Equity Upstream has always been to catalyze action across our region and the state. Towards that end, MSHN also initiated a pilot Equity Upstream Learning Collaborative of providers who are working together to translate knowledge into action, to improve access and quality of care for all populations, and to reduce disparities in SUD health outcomes. Those providers' action plans commenced in FY25. MSHN will share outcomes at the end of this fiscal year.