The Spectrum Health System employs approximately 30,000 employees in Grand Rapids and beyond, including as far south as Niles, as far north as Traverse City, and on the lakeshore from Holland to Ludington. Since being founded in Grand Rapids in 1997, its mission has been “To improve the health of the communities we serve.”  Because eliminating health care disparities and improving the quality of care for all communities is integral to its mission, health equity, diversity and inclusion have always been a major focus.

“For as long as Spectrum Health has been here, we’ve been focusing on diversity and inclusion,” says Valissa Armstead, manager of inclusion and diversity. “At the beginning, that meant focusing on Affirmative Action compliance. Over the years, that expanded into the strategic inclusion and diversity model we have today. We are helping everyone in the system to own it.”

In 2017, Spectrum Health propelled its commitment to inclusion and diversity by signing the American Hospital Association’s #123forEquity Pledgeand Talent 2025 CEO Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In 2018, Spectrum Health was included in the Diversity Best Practices 2018 Inclusion Index for diversity and inclusion practices in recruitment, retention and advancement; organizational culture; and demographic transparency.

Spectrum Health describes its commitment to diversity and inclusion as “treating people—our consumers and our peers—with dignity and respect. It’s about belonging and about engaging with others. It’s about stepping out of comfort zones, suspending judgments and being curious. It’s about actively listening and including different perspectives.”

From policy to practice

Spectrum Health’s inclusion and diversity team is making meaningful progress in putting policy into practice at all levels in the organization. “We are taking inclusion to a different level by expanding beyond the normal human resource model,” Armstead says. “We asked ‘How do you leverage diversity in your workplace to improve the health of the community you serve?’ We took that and realigned our work in five areas of focus.”

Those areas of focus are: equity of care, cultural competency, workforce diversity, community engagement and supplier diversity. Another effective strategy is to seek out champions across the system. “It begins with senior leadership engagement,” says Jennifer Jackson, director of inclusion and diversity. “We begin with getting executive sponsors on board and engaging champions across the organization.”

Establishing employee-led inclusion resource groups has been another strategy for translating policies into corporate culture at all levels. Groups include Spectrum Health Young Professionals; Healthy Pride; Spectrum Health African Americans for Resources & Engagement; Veteran Inclusion Resource Group; and Fusion: Hispanic/Latino Inclusion Resource Group.

“A lot of the work has been building the foundation at the team level,” Jackson says. “Conversations are happening that wouldn’t have happened before. Individuals are opening up and sharing their values, perspectives and are willing to have open and transparent conversations. These team level conversations are pushing through barriers. I see more and more employees being able to share their whole selves at work and that’s encouraging.”

To make sure that its patient population is taken into account, Spectrum Health engages focus groups representative of patient demographics to gather feedback that can inform policy and practice around inclusion, diversity and health equity.

Last but not least, Spectrum Health’s inclusion and diversity team is working hard to improve systematic collection of data that is stratified by race, ethnicity and language preference; later leading to the collection of other socio-demographic data. Careful metrics from leaders, team members and patients are continually gathered, measured and interpreted to ensure that the work is truly getting done.

“We’ve learned that we have a unique opportunity in health care to engage in inclusion and diversity strategies that truly do contribute to our mission to improve health of the communities we serve. Health disparities annually cost the United States $101.9 million,” Armstead says. “We are looking at the disparities in our communities, in both our patient populations and our workforce. We identify what barriers exist and ask ‘how do we address those barriers?’”