2026 Pennsylvania Health Equity Summit

Behavioral health challenges such as gambling disorder, trauma exposure, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders often go unrecognized, yet have profound impacts on individuals, families, and communities. This breakout session highlights community-driven and trauma-informed approaches that improve early intervention, reduce stigma, and expand access to services. Speakers will share practical strategies for strengthening partnerships, screening, and coordinated care to advance more equitable behavioral health outcomes.

Advancing health equity requires clinical innovation that meets people where they are and prioritizes trauma-informed care as well as addresses disparities embedded in health systems. This breakout session highlights equity-driven clinical advances, including street-based wound care for unhoused and BIPOC communities, Pennsylvania’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to improve survivor-centered care and accountability, and peer-led interventions that reduce hospital readmissions among older adults of color. Speakers will demonstrate how accessible care models, technology enabled coordination, and community partnerships can improve outcomes, strengthen trust, and reduce disparities across diverse clinical settings.

Across public health systems, critical voices remain missing. This breakout session explores how community-centered models like Spectrum of Care, Dadvocates (an initiative that engages men in maternal health), and mobile cancer screening units are redefining equitable partnerships by centering lived experience, cultural humility, and trust. Together, these approaches elevate voices often excluded from public health decision-making, including families of color impacted by autism, Black fathers in maternal health, and communities historically disconnected from preventive care. Speakers will highlight how engaging nontraditional allies—such as faith-based institutions, community organizations, and families strengthens outcomes across maternal health, developmental services, and cancer prevention.

Rural communities across Pennsylvania continue to face inequities driven by workforce shortages, geographic isolation, and limited access to essential services. This breakout session explores innovative approaches to rural health equity, including the PC-Medic workforce model to expand primary care access, leadership strategies that strengthen the vital conditions shaping community well-being, and clinical insights into improving women’s health across the life course in rural and underserved areas. Speakers will share practical strategies that align workforce development and community partnerships to improve access and health outcomes in rural communities.

Communities across Pennsylvania continue to experience health inequities driven by housing instability, unsafe living conditions, and limited access to behavioral health care. This breakout session highlights innovative, community-based approaches including collaborative housing and health models, tailored environmental health education, and street psychiatry. Speakers will share practical strategies for building cross-sector partnerships to improve access, equity, and health outcomes for vulnerable populations.

Maternal health impacts individuals, families, and communities across Pennsylvania, yet maternal mortality and morbidity continue to rise, driven by systemic inequities within healthcare systems. This breakout session will explore maternal health through a health equity and social justice lens, examining the structural, social, and community-level factors that contribute to disparities. Participants will engage in discussion on strategies to strengthen maternal health outcomes by advancing equitable care, elevating community voices, and supporting solutions rooted in policy, practice, and community-based action.

Behavioral health is a growing public health priority, yet persistent gaps remain in access, advocacy, and equity compared to physical health conditions. This breakout session will center underrepresented experiences within behavioral health and highlight emerging and often overlooked issues. Topics will include strengthening trauma-informed systems for youth, recognizing gambling as a behavioral health condition, and advancing whole-person, integrated care models. Participants will explore opportunities to reduce stigma, improve access to services, and promote equitable behavioral health systems across communities.

Data plays a critical role in identifying community needs, understanding health disparities, and driving equitable solutions. This breakout session will focus on how data can be effectively collected, analyzed, and translated into action to improve health outcomes. Participants will explore approaches to using data to identify gaps in access and outcomes, inform decision-making, and guide community-driven interventions. The session will highlight strategies for collaborative, community-informed data practices and demonstrate how data can be leveraged to advance health equity, strengthen partnerships, and support meaningful public health action.

Although people with disabilities (PWD) are recognized by federal law as a Health Disparity Population, there are still gaps in education, policy initiatives, and data collection surrounding PWD that contribute to decreased quality of care. This breakout room will highlight essential and innovative practices that advocate for recognition of PWD and sustainable policies to improve care. The discussion will cover developing educational materials on intellectual and developmental disabilities for healthcare providers, improving disabled person representation in Community Health Assessments, and mandating certified electronic health records and disability data capture. These measures focus on lived experience and evidence to prove that modernization is needed in the medical community’s treatment of the disabled community. 

Chronic diseases burden a large proportion of the population and inaction to address the root causes of these diseases often leads to more strain and missed perspectives. This breakout will feature a look into different chronic diseases and how they disproportionally affect marginalized communities and how important outreach is needed. Participants will learn about many different chronic conditions from chronic stress, to cancer, to chronic respiratory diseases, and be exposed to the caps in care that exist for those who are affected by these conditions. These presenters will also highlight the strength of community partnerships in equitable chronic disease care.

Young adults are the next generation that will be taking on and experiencing public health challenges so it is important to center them in conversations about health equity. This breakout room focuses on youth behavioral health services through a variety of different lenses. The conversation will flow from early exposure to behavior health careers, learning to engage families in conversations about cultural barriers to care for LGBTQ+ youth, and increasing care for mental health and sexual and reproductive health in high need counties across Pennsylvania. Participants will learn about the importance to integration mental health support into adolescent programs and innovation in mental health care.

Policies that shape our public health landscape are being designed and implemented across Pennsylvania every day. This breakout room will put the spotlight on three multidisciplinary, evidence-based policy ideas that focus on current health equity concerns. Topics will cover the importance of meaningful outdoor recreation for aging adults, community-driven policies that improve outcomes for young mothers, and research into the connections between exposure to eCTC payments and low-income birth outcomes. All presenters focus on the barriers to equity that exist and the opportunities we have to create a system that is responsive to the needs in our society.