Advocate Aurora Health's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategy is anchored by its purpose to help people live well. It is fueled by a commitment to transform its workplace and communities. Advocate Aurora believes everyone should have a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. 
Here’s how Advocate Aurora is working to close gaps, foster a thriving inclusive environment, and ensure outcomes that are consistent and fair:
Leading – Denouncing discrimination and racism by identifying and dismantling structural barriers in our organization. The Advocate Aurora Health Inclusion Council is a newly launched model that addresses the challenge of locally executing its system DE&I strategy by deploying 11 inclusion council core teams made up of 150 team members who are trained in DE&I strategy and key principles and behaviors, such as valuing differences and exhibiting courage.
Committing – Advocate Aurora is operationalizing this work by building it into all it does. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Advocate Aurora is focused on strengthening its commitment to support nationally certified enterprises owned by persons of color, women, LGBTQ-identified individuals, and veterans. Advocate Aurora set its business diversity spend goal to 6% and aims to reach a goal of 6.6% in 2021.
Advancing our Community Strategy – Advocate Aurora's system-wide Community Strategy is focused on removing barriers to access primary care and behavioral health as well as utilizing community-based programming and partnerships to address community safety, food security, housing security, and workforce development. For example, to address Milwaukee’s COVID-19 uptick within the 53204 and 53215 ZIP codes, Advocate Aurora partnered with Carmen South High School to offer virtual consultations with Advocate Aurora physicians and distribute more than 400 COVID-19 kits including educational materials in English and Spanish, masks, hand sanitizer and other supplies at their student orientation.