Cedars-Sinai’s Nicole M.B. Mitchell, MBA, CDP, chief diversity and inclusion officer (top right) teamed with colleague Linda Burnes Bolton, DrPH, RN, senior vice president and chief health equity officer (lower right) on Jan. 7. 

Close to 50 California health care professionals attended this month’s HASC Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Roundtable spotlighting the Cedars-Sinai hospital system’s DEI initiative. 

HASC is presenting a DEI roundtable series with additional sessions set for March 4, May 6, July 8 and Sept. 2. The association’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative is an ongoing effort to foster DEI values across the region’s health care community.

Cedars-Sinai’s early history included hiring and serving groups denied jobs and care at other facilities, noted Dr. Linda Burnes Bolton, chief health equity officer. Still, today’s DEI movement is a very recent phenomena. Burnes Bolton and colleague Nicole Mitchell, chief diversity and inclusion officer, were hired to launch the system’s DEI program in 2019.

“When Cedars first started the program there were only about 20 institutions — most academic medical centers — in the entire U.S. that had offices of diversity and equity,” Burnes Bolton related. “Now, there are over 200.”

Cedars-Sinai is now finishing the survey phase of its DEI effort. It is building and expanding a custom Diversity Dashboard to chart demographic data in a breadth of categories that include ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation and other identifiers. Some of the information is very personal to employees, and program managers have moved slowly to encourage employees from senior management down to participate.

The program’s success is due, in part, to the creation of “safe space” and an “environment of belonging,” Mitchell told Jan. 7 participants.

The project has succeeded in creating an inclusive environment where people are comfortable, she explained. 

Cedars-Sinai’s DEI project has also produced a Conversations for All, by All webinar series, and a video that encapsulates program values, Mitchell said. 

To view the video, access the Cedars-Sinai DEI page, then scroll down and click the blue “Diversity and Inclusion in Action” button. 

For organizations planning to launch a DEI initiative, support from the top is essential, Burnes Bolton underlined.

“Yes we had senior managers who were not on board (at the project’s launch),” she explained. “We had members of the medical staff who were not on board. But when the president of the organization says, ‘We’re going to do this!’ – it happens.”

Almost all participants now feel comfortable joining the conversation, Mitchell added.

“I encourage people to listen to all sides as you’re putting this together,” she said.

View the Jan. 7 one-hour DEI Roundtable session by clicking here. View or download the session slidedeck here.

Contact:
Lisa Mitchell
(213) 538-0722
lmitchell@hasc.org