Nusha Ramsoondar

Cultural safety, continuity, and social accountability strategies have a common goal: to improve health equity. Cultural safety and continuity, understood as critical components in social accountability strategies, are means of providing relevant health care to Indigenous and culturally diverse populations; delivering high-quality care in social and culturally distinct contexts; and safeguarding health care from discrimination and racism.

The objective of the Social Accountability as the Framework for Engagement (SAFE) for Health Institutions project (https://safeforhealthinstitutions.org) is to develop a tool kit that can accelerate the adoption of social accountability strategies in health care.

Imagine being a family physician in a large interdisciplinary primary care practice. The organization’s board of directors passes a motion (macro level) that directs the administration, under its social accountability mandate, to become an antiracist health institution (meso level). An antiracism policy (meso level) is created, but admittedly this is a new, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable topic.