Health Equity Charter

This Charter is a commitment to action by the Association of Ontario Health Centres and its member agencies to recognize and confront barriers to equitable health. 

In our work within the broader community, we will identify, name and confront inequity by: 

  • Collaborating with health partners and the broader community to ensure equity as an underlying goal of the health system 

  • Supporting and collaborating with community groups who are challenging the social conditions that cause health inequities 

  • Documenting the causes of, impacts of, and potential solutions to health inequities 

  • Advocating for public policy responses proposed by communities to reduce health inequities 

  • Contributing to building an integrated, high-performing health system with health equity as one of its underlying principles 

To learn more about the Health Equity Charter: https://www.allianceon.org/health-equity-charter  

As outlined in the Health Equity Charter by the Alliance for Healthier Communities, Country Roads Community Health Centre will identify, name and confront inequity by: 

  • Assigning priority to population groups who have the greatest health needs and least access to services 

  • Involving the communities we serve in the design and delivery of our programs 

  • Developing anti-racism/anti-oppression strategies to identify, name and confront practices that reproduce oppression within our organizations 

  • Developing human resource policies and practices designed to ensure that the diversity of the communities we serve is reflected at all levels – volunteer, staff, management and board – in our organizations 

  • Ensuring our policies, procedures and staff training meet the linguistic, cultural and other needs of the diverse communities we serve 

  • Developing evaluation strategies that measure health equity efforts and health equity results and using the evaluation data to continually improve health equity practices 

  • Using equity as a measure of quality in delivering people-centred care 

  • Sharing best practices and lessons learned in achieving health equity results