Denise Octavia Smith - Approaching Policy with Equity in Mind

The pandemic has exposed deep inequities in the U.S. and around the world. At the height of the pandemic in the United States, Black Americans were dying of COVID-19 at three times the rate of white Americans. Indigenous populations have had of the highest rates of COVID-19 in the U.S., and globally. These inequities are becoming even more pronounced in as rollout of vaccines begins, with historic lack of trust in governments and health providers and additional challenges to access. There are myriad innovative approaches to pandemic response at the community level, but those innovations and ideas are not being integrated into broader plans and systems. Effective pandemic response without community-based leadership will fail because of the essential need for trust and accountability at the community level. Join frontline community leaders from around the world for this timely discussion.

Denise Octavia Smith, MBA, CHW, PN a woman of African descent, Community Health Worker, and survivor of a rare chronic disease is the founding Executive Director of the National Association of Community Health Workers. During the COVID-19 pandemic Denise partnered with global and US organizations to center CHWs’ expertise, racial equity and authentic community-based partnership.

In 2013, Denise partnered with hundreds of CHWs to achieve historic community engagement and enrollment of 30,000 residents into her state’s ACA Health Insurance Marketplace. Her research interests include building trust and relationship, patient and community-level health system governance, health insurance literacy and CHW policy leadership. Mrs. Smith is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care, an Aspen Institute Healthy Communities Fellow, and a Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Leader.