Exec: Think About DEI As a 'Culture Change Strategy'

Tanya Blackmon, MSW, MBA, executive vice president and chief diversity, inclusion, and equity officer for Novant Health, highlights the health system's initiatives she leads around DEI, health equity, and healthcare worker well-being.

Editor's note: This conversation is a transcript from an episode of the HealthLeaders Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast. Audio of the full interview can be found here.

Tanya Blackmon, MSW, MBA, hasn't always worked in healthcare, but she has touched many lives over the span of her professional career.

Her career journey started in social work, then she joined Novant Health in 1992. Through her past experience as a social worker and experience as a leader in a variety of roles for the health system over the past two decades, she has made great strides in her mission and life's purpose of adding value to the lives of the people that she serves.

She currently leads diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) and health equity efforts for Novant Health, as executive vice president and chief diversity, inclusion, and equity officer, furthering her life's purpose.

In the latest Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast episode, Blackmon shares the health system's initiatives she leads around DEI, health equity, and healthcare worker well-being. She also offers leadership advice for current healthcare leaders around DEI and health equity, and shares advice for future leaders.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

HealthLeaders: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Novant Health launched Thriving Together, a program to address the well-being of the health system's workforce. How has the program helped the workforce and how will it continue to help?

Tanya Blackmon: Our team members have been on the front lines of this pandemic, and have really proven to be healthcare heroes, even though they would not call themselves healthcare heroes. But when you think about them, serving our communities, taking care of our patients, taking care of each other, and taking care of their own families and loved ones, they really are heroes.

It has highlighted our commitment to our people. When there's a crisis, you realize what's important. And we have a people credo that we keep in our mind that says that our business is about caring for all people, but it starts with our team members. We've done just that and started looking at what are some needs of our team members.

We created the Thriving Together platform so that we could focus on promoting health and wellness for our team members during the pandemic. It has several focus areas:

• Human connection
• Financial and community resources
• Physical health
• Leadership, and how to lead in a challenging environment
• Emotional wellness
• Addressing burnout

We had to make sure that we were taking care of the people that are on the team already, then look at how to recruit new team members in a space where there's a pandemic.

One of the things that we did as an executive team is that we pulled together $13 million and put this in our Hope for Remarkable Team Aubergine Fund. That fund provided financial assistance to team members for basic living needs like housing, food, and transportation. We were able to serve over 13,000 team members. Team members to this day still talk about how important that fund was.

We decided recently to give each full-time team member the option of receiving an additional week of pay or an equivalent cash award to help them through this pandemic. That was an additional $40 million that we invested in our team members to make sure we were providing as much care for them as we were to our patients in the community.

We believe that if you're going to deliver world class care, you have to care for the people that are caring for the patients. We're continuously looking at innovative ways to make sure our team members know that they're valued and that we want them to thrive at Novant Health.

We are going to continue Thriving Together and we're focusing a lot on the emotional well-being of team members. We have an employee assistance program that's a part of this thriving together that will continue to be a part of us. Our spiritual care program is also a program that will be ongoing.

HL: What other well-being or DEI initiatives are you excited to lead this year?

Blackmon: Our most recent long-term goal focused on increasing the percentage of breast cancer screening mammograms for women in all races and ethnicities. We've had a real focus on Latinas and our Asian American women. We noticed that they had lower screening rates than other races, and so we as a company decided we would make this a three-year long-term goal to focus on increasing the mammogram screening rates for those populations.

We'll continue to work on health equity and identifying healthcare disparities by using something we call "REaL-GAPS." We look at all of our quality and safety data by race, ethnicity, language, gender, age, payor source, sexual orientation, gender identity, zip codes, geographic locations, so that we can find out who has access to care, and who does not.

HL: What advice do you have for other healthcare organization executives around actionable steps that can be taken to address DEI and health equity?

Blackmon: For Novant Health, we approach embedding diversity, inclusion, equity. Some organizations think about it as a program, we felt that since this was a core value of ours, we had to approach it as a culture change strategy.

I would also say is that it's important to get your CEO as a part of that. At Novant Health, our CEO, Carl Armato, recognized the importance of diversity, inclusion, and equity, particularly since it's a core value. Our board is fully supportive and prioritizes diversity, inclusion, and equity on their agenda.

We have long-term metrics looking at how do we measure inclusion? How do we measure our supplier diversity? Are we achieving health equity by closing healthcare disparity gaps in our organization? It's been great to be a part of an organization where the CEO, the executive team, and the entire board supports this work. It makes us know that it's a valued strategic imperative for the organization.

HL: You joined Novant Health in 1992, and since then have held a variety of leadership roles. What initially interested you about working in healthcare and healthcare leadership, and focusing on DEI?

Blackmon: My background is in social work; I actually have a master's and bachelor's degree in social work, and I also have my MBA. I didn't initially seek out this role as the chief diversity, inclusion, and equity officer.

When I joined Novant Health in 1992, I was the director of case management. I got to work with nurses and physicians and the patients, and that was great for me to understand healthcare from that perspective. Later in my career, I became the president of two of our hospitals, Novant Health Charlotte Orthopedic Hospital and Novant Health Huntersville Medical Center. I was also director of clinical improvement and community care services.

When I think about my role as a leader, I think about social work, in that social work is based on Systems Theory. You have to understand how each of the people in a family make that family system functional or dysfunctional. I take that knowledge into whatever work I do in this role as the chief diversity, inclusion, and equity officer.

HL: With your background as a social worker and leading in different leadership roles, how have your experiences all come together to create your current leadership style?

Blackmon: I think my team would say I have a participatory leadership style.

I think about Maya Angelou's quote that says, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In my role, I try to understand people and inspire them, instead of making people do things.

I believe that my mission and my life's purpose is to add value to the lives of the people that I serve, whether that's in the hospital, in the community, in my family, wherever it is.

HL: What advice do you have for future leaders who may make the jump into the C-suite?

Blackmon: I think about my own journey, and one of the things is that you have to be assertive in your own learning. Sometimes, people just do what's on their job description and they do that well, but you have to be assertive in learning more, understanding more about the business, more about people that you work with.

I would also say that mentors are important, and eventually sponsors. Having people around you that are mentors to you, that you can talk to about your thoughts, that will give you feedback on whether think you did something well or whether you could have. I think when you're surrounded by people that care about you, you can create that environment.

I also would say I'm continually learning from others. If a leader ever stops learning, they're in trouble. Because the world keeps changing and we can't possibly know everything. I think we have to also be willing to ask questions and say, "I don't know," or say, "I made a mistake."

Another thing that's been important to me is listening. When we started changing our culture with embedding diversity, inclusion, and equity, I did a listening tour across the company to understand where people are, to hear their perspectives, and to allow them to have a voice. I want to make sure I'm having authentic conversations, and building trusting relationships that are meaningful, and that truly can fulfill my mission of adding value to the lives of the people that I touch and serve.