Embracing JEDI Values and Champions: A Message from Dr. Sybil Pentsil, Chief Diversity Officer

Our Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) is guided by the idea that in order for LifeBridge Health to excel as an organization, all patients and team members should feel empowered to be their best selves every day. Formerly known as the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the JEDI team will expand on the efforts it undertook under its previous title, just as the addition of “justice” helps enhance the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion as a whole. 

Among the JEDI office’s new initiatives is a monthly recognition of a “JEDI Champion” – a LifeBridge Health team member who goes above and beyond what is expected to embody the values of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. The Office of JEDI has launched this new recognition by appointing Ayesha Fowler as the JEDI Champion of the Year for 2022. As we look ahead to monthly recognitions moving forward, we’d like to take this opportunity to define the concepts behind JEDI and what it means to be a JEDI Champion. 
JEDI Terms

In the healthcare space, justice is concerned with the rights of patients, visitors and team members at LifeBridge Health. A commitment to justice is a vigilant effort to ensure that fairness prevails, requiring organizations to address and correct internal structures, policies and practices which promote inequity. To help us understand the importance of equity, let’s define this term next. 

Equity means ensuring that all individuals are provided with adequate resources for success based on their unique circumstances. Without efforts to promote equity, those marginalized for their economic status, race, gender, sexuality – and any combination of these – do not have an equal chance for success as team members in the workplace or patients in the exam room. In the world of healthcare, health inequities are evidenced by disparities in length of life, quality of life, rates of disease, disability and death, severity of disease and access to treatment. 

Diversity is about ensuring that people of all races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations are represented at LifeBridge Health. By bringing members of underserved and underrepresented communities into the fold, we promote future opportunities for a diverse array of people who may have faced barriers or felt unwelcome in healthcare spaces. 

For any organization, and especially in healthcare, inclusion is just as crucial as diversity. Where diversity is about ensuring that people of many different backgrounds are represented within the organization, inclusion about making sure that these peoples’ perspectives help guide all of our efforts. By including diverse perspectives in all that we do, we position ourselves to better serve our patients and communities, deepening our empathy and understanding for the unique needs of different individuals and populations.

We look forward to sharing JEDI Champion acknowledgments in the weeks and months to come and hope that they serve as reminders to stand up for all of the values above at every opportunity – by doing so, we strengthen ourselves both as individuals and as an organization.