Health Equity
The Office of Health Equity (OHE) assures equitable access to effective, quality DHHS programs and services across all populations, with specialized focus on racial, ethnic, language, gender and sexual minorities, and individuals with disabilities.
OHE provides policy, strategic guidance, training, coaching and technical assistance across the entire Department for an ongoing organizational process of improvement related to diversity, inclusion and equity as well as organizational cultural effectiveness, supporting all program areas’ capacity to provide quality care and services to all.
- OHE bears responsibility for assuring DHHS cross-divisional compliance with all applicable federal civil rights laws, including those that require communication assistance, both through the Department’s own staff, programs and services, and for those services provided by contracted providers. See Communication Access
- OHE promotes immigrant integration and houses the New Hampshire State Refugee Program with the goal of assisting refugees in achieving economic self-sufficiency and social adjustment and serves refugees within their first five years of arrival to the US. See NH Refugee Program
- OHE promotes authentic community engagement and maintains connections with racial/ethnic and other medically underserved and historically marginalized populations to center and uplift the voices of people with lived experience.
- OHE works in partnership with many cross-sector partners and stakeholders (at the local, regional and national level) to improve the overall health of our New Hampshire communities by building on community assets and knowledge while developing combined resources to promote opportunity and well-being. See NH Health and Equity Partnership
- OHE promotes equity by working in the social determinants of health and addressing the underlying structural, institutional and systemic determinants of inequity.
The Office of Minority Health was created in 1999 to help ensure that all residents of New Hampshire have access to DHHS services and to improve the health of minorities. In 2010, Office of Minority Health and Refugee Affairs was renamed and expanded to include The State Refugee Program. As part of the Department’s Redesign efforts in 2016, the Office was renamed the Office of Health Equity.
Contact Information
A New Granite State
A video from the EndowmentforHealth, with a special message about the changing faces of the Granite State, through the words of Atlas the Poet's powerful work, A New Granite State, brought to life by leaders of the Race & Equity in NH Series.