Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

The Office of Diversity & Community Health Equity supports and promotes UI Health’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives for our staff, patients, and the communities we serve.

Promoting health equity and improving the health of our patients and communities are core components of our mission at UI Health, and we are committed to addressing and eliminating discrimination in all forms within our organization. Our organizational recommitment to being more diverse, inclusive, and equitable helps ensure we carry out our mission every day.

As we work towards our goal of excellent, equitable care, we encourage patients to provide their demographics, such as race, ethnicity, preferred language, sexual orientation, and gender identity, via registration and MyChart. At UI Health, excellent care begins with understanding and acknowledging every patient as they want to be seen, and this information helps us achieve that. By continually working to expand care to more communities, improve patient outcomes, and eliminate health disparities, we can achieve health equity for all.


Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Healthcare

At UI Health, providing safe, high-quality care for all patients is our foremost responsibility. The UIC Office of Graduate Medical Education (GME) has a commitment to the education of our faculty, fellows, residents, and staff across age; gender-identity-expression; race, ethnicity, country and regions of origin; cultures; socioeconomic status, political beliefs; spiritual/religious beliefs or other ideologies; disabilities; and sexual orientation. Through this mission, our objective is to:

  • Foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning environment.
  • Provide resources for residents, fellows, faculty, and staff to enrich diversity, equity, and inclusion through training, educational development, and discourse.
  • Support diversifying the physician workforce to produce professionals that are reflective of the communities we serve and who can address the healthcare needs of the state and the nation.

LGBTQ+ Inclusion

UI Health is nationally recognized for our inclusive healthcare and policies related to LGBTQ+ patients, visitors, and staff. We are consistently recognized by the Human Rights Campaign's Health Equality Index (HEI), an annual survey that evaluates health systems on key criteria for non-discrimination policies and practices.

Our patient-centered organization is dedicated to providing exceptional care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) patients, and families through its commitment to treating all patients with dignity, respect, and compassion regardless of age, race, religion, culture; language; ethnicity; physical or mental disability; socioeconomic status; sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression; veteran status; or any other status protected by law.


Community

UI Health prides itself on being an engaged partner to the many communities we are honored to serve. We take great pride and accept the responsibility that comes with that commitment. Each year, the University of Illinois takes part in numerous community events to educate, nurture, and care for the many people that make up each of these communities.