Health Equity: How Employers Can Help Achieve It

Health equity refers to the idea that everyone should have a fair opportunity to achieve their best possible health, regardless of social, economic, demographic, or geographic factors. It focuses on removing barriers—including income, race, or location—that lead to unequal health outcomes.  

Despite advances in healthcare, disparities persist, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. These disparities often manifest in reduced access to care, poorer health outcomes, and increased financial burdens. To address these disparities, we must work toward health equity and employers can play a pivotal role in achieving it.  

What is Health Equity? 

Health equity involves ensuring everyone has access to the care and resources they need to achieve the best health outcomes. This differs from the idea of equality, where everyone receives the same resources regardless of their needs or circumstances. Equity accounts for historical and structural disadvantages, aiming to eliminate barriers so that all people can attain optimal health. 

Health disparities are influenced by a variety of factors, including social determinants of health (SDoH)—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. These include factors like socioeconomic status, education, access to transportation, and housing, all of which significantly impact health outcomes. Achieving health equity will require unified effort across multiple levels, including policy changes, healthcare reform, and innovative benefit plan design. 

The Role of Employers  

Employers can play a key role in achieving health equity by designing benefit plans that address the unique needs of their workforce and educating their employees about their health benefits. Effective health plans help employers ensure their employees are healthy and well-supported. This is important because in addition to employers’ sense of care for their employees, healthier employees benefit businesses by lowering healthcare costs, reducing absenteeism, and boosting productivity. 

Inclusive Benefit Plan Design 

Employer-sponsored health plans should cover a wide range of services, including preventive and specialty services. Employers can tailor their benefit offerings to their employee population by including robust coverage for mental health services. While these services are widely needed, they may be more critical in communities facing socioeconomic challenges or in high-stress environments. Employers can also cover preventative and maintenance services at low or no cost for conditions prevalent in their employee population like pre-diabetes, hypertension, and maternal health issues. Investing in preventive care saves costs long-term by addressing conditions early, before they become more complex and costly. 

Employers can consider making sure their benefits cover culturally competent care. This can include access to providers who speak the employee’s preferred language or who have expertise in treating conditions that disproportionately affect certain populations. Employers can also remove barriers to care by designing plans that address SDoH and include benefits like transportation to medical appointments or access to nutrition and wellness programs.  

Robust Provider Networks 

A comprehensive, customizable provider network is crucial to ensuring that employees have access to high-quality, affordable care. Effective benefit plans need a network that includes a range of providers who are geographically accessible, accepting patients, and able to address the specific health needs of employee populations. A robust provider network should include virtual options to improve access in rural and underserved urban areas lacking providers.

The Alliance helps self-funded employers create custom provider networks through our Smarter Networks^SM. We partner with over 39,000 medical professionals across the Midwest, including 9,700 clinics, 150 hospitals, and 395 home health providers. Our Comprehensive Network covers 91% of the state of Wisconsin, offering employees and their families a wide range of healthcare options.  

Our Premier Networks offer tailored solutions that meet both employees’ specific geographic and healthcare needs. By integrating major health systems with alternative care providers—including independent primary care, behavioral health, imaging, and laboratory services—we ensure individuals can access care in the setting that suits them best at a reasonable cost. 

Promoting Health Literacy 

Health literacy—people’s ability to access and understand basic health information—plays a vital role in achieving health equity. Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 adults in the U.S. struggle to understand their benefits. This should be a major concern for employers because according to a recent survey, employees who understood their benefits were more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.  

Employers can promote health literacy by offering education, including multilingual resources, culturally relevant health education, and guidance on accessing their benefit plan and navigating the healthcare system. These efforts empower diverse employee populations to better understand their benefits and make informed healthcare decisions. You can read more about how to effectively communicate with employees and keep them engaged with their benefit plans here.  

The Alliance supports our employer-members by creating a wide range of educational flyers in multiple languages. Employers can share these flyers with their employees to help them get the most out of their benefits. We also have an educational playlist of videos on our YouTube channel to help employees understand their self-funded benefit plan and The Alliance’s tools, like Find a Doctor.  

Working Toward Health Equity 

Achieving health equity is a complex challenge that requires collective effort. Employers are uniquely positioned to help bridge the gap in health disparities. Through thoughtful plan design, a robust provider network, and inclusive policies employers can help promote health equity.

If you’re wondering if self-funding is right for your business, reach out to our Business Development team to learn how The Alliance can help you support your employees and their families.