Abstract
The Right to Health (World Health Organization) premises access to timely, acceptable, and affordable healthcare of appropriate quality. Decision-maker and practitioner focus in healthcare has been on improving equity of access for community members with particular individual diversity characteristics, to improve identified disparities in health outcomes. Diversity is what makes an individual unique, but it is the interplay of these diversity characteristics that provides both interest and challenge to the participation of the older person in their healthcare.
This symposium has three linked presentations exploring diversity through the lens of intersectionality; that diversity characteristics cannot be looked at in isolation, that participation in healthcare cannot be reduced to a single characteristic. This project is funded by Department of Social Services (Australia) and conducted through the Royal District Nursing Service (RDNS), a not-for-profit community organisation providing home nursing and healthcare services. The opening presentation sets the international policy stage for equity in healthcare, drawing on important work by the WHO, U.S. Institute of Medicine and Kings Fund U.K., linking to Australian diversity and inclusion policies. The second presentation expands the theoretical underpinnings of key concepts related to diversity, based upon meta-narrative systematic review findings. The final presentation will address implementing diversity concepts into practice from an expert in a particular ‘diversity characteristic’, highlighting how characteristics intertwine to provide context to a person’s life, presenting barriers and opportunities to participation in healthcare.