Why Root Causes?

What is a “root cause” and why do we need to consider root causes when we talk about advancing health equity? “Why Root Causes?” is the first course in our series and will cover why a root-cause approach is crucial to examining and eliminating health inequity. As public health practitioners, we aim to create public health systems that can support everyone. However, we find time and again that we are not able to reach and support all populations effectively and that some populations consistently have worse health outcomes than others. A root-cause approach helps us to identify who and what generates health inequity, as well as the systems that keep it firmly entrenched in population health efforts. It also helps us to understand why mitigation through traditional programs and services, though necessary, will never end the ongoing production of health inequity. In this course, we’ll explore the meaning and necessity of health equity, the core features of health inequity, and other concepts we will return to throughout this series. We will then highlight some initial strategies for how we can begin to identify root causes of health inequity in different scenarios.