Posts in Health Equity
Part 4 - What Got Us Here Won’t Get Us There

The institutions we are in shape our behaviors. When institutions shape our behaviors such that our behaviors are no longer in line with our values we experience burnout. Burnout is a problem with the company not the individual” (Harvard Business Review) [2]. How we approach remediating harms, whether it be from workplace accidents to healthcare inequities, we must remember that our institutions hold the power and the responsibility of our culture…

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Part 3 - Why It Is So Hard To Change

When we think of basic behavior patterning we think of classical vs. operant conditioning [1]. In 1904 Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel prize in Physiology [2] for his experiments of classical conditioning. In his experiments, he trained a reflex behavior, salivating to food in dogs to salivating to a bell (instead of to food), thereby re-routing a reflex behavior through conditioning. Operant conditioning is a term coined in 1937 by B.F. Skinner to describe conditioning voluntary behavior change based on punishment or reward (consequences) [3]…

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Part 2 - Individual Bias vs Institutionalized “-isms”

Historically bias was a synonym of preference. In psychology and anthropology bias is defined as an inherited preference or learned preference. For example, an inherited dislike of bitter foods. In this way, bias is seen as a conserved evolutionary trait because of how it connoted a survival benefit…

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