Strategic Partnerships to Advance Health Equity

Strategic partnerships have a long history in human development, commerce, and health care. From London and Venice in the 11th Century to Constantinople in the Ottoman era, strategic partnerships in trade and commerce fueled the Commercial Revolution through the mid-18th Century and helped strengthen and advance commerce in the major city states of medieval Europe and the Middle East.1,2 Partnerships have also been important in the practice of medicine and public health. Strategic partnerships to advance health care quality, efficiency, and access have led to record numbers of hospital and health system mergers and acquisitions in nearly two decades.3 More recently, a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine identified strategic partnerships as necessary for successfully addressing the drivers that “perpetuate structural inequities” in health and health care and thus, important in accelerating efforts to advance health equity.4 In this issue of Ethnicity & Disease, we highlight the importance of strategic partnerships between and across multiple domains, sectors, and related stakeholders to advance health equity research and the translation of research findings into routine clinical and public health settings. We define health equity as “the state in which everyone has the opportunity to attain full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or any other socially defined circumstance.”4 The central themes of the articles in this journal issue are the concept of social justice,5 the importance of the social determinants of health,6 the notion of health in all policies,7 and the need to forge strategic alliances8 between researchers from Foreword: Strategic PartnerShiPS to advance health equity