Equity By Design Inc.

Our Focus

Three pillars. One standard.

We work across three interconnected domains where the design gap shows up most persistently — and where a shared standard would change outcomes.

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Health Equity

Health equity is cited in nearly every public health strategy document. It is rarely measured after deployment. We advance the standard that equitable outcomes must be built into health and social systems from the start — not added as an afterthought.

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Social Drivers of Health

Referral systems that screen for social needs without tracking whether those needs are met do not close the loop. We advance the standard that SDoH outcomes must be documented and reported — not assumed from a referral sent.

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Social Prescribing

Social prescribing has transformed community health delivery globally. We work to advance its evidence base in the U.S. and ensure that social prescribing programs are designed to produce — and measure — equitable outcomes.

The Evidence

Equity Is Cited. Equity Is Rarely Measured.

In March 2026, the World Health Organization published its most comprehensive analysis to date of how equity is built into the systems designed to serve underserved communities — 154 studies across regulation, implementation, and evaluation. The central finding: equity is increasingly referenced in strategy, but rarely measured after deployment.

WHO calls this the “cumulative equity gap” — systems that address one layer of a complex problem while leaving the others broken. The report advocates for an equity-by-design approach: equity embedded at every stage of a system’s life cycle, not added as an afterthought.

This failure appears across social service referral networks, social prescribing programs, community health workforce development, and in the procurement and funding processes that reward implementation over evidence. Equity By Design Inc. was founded to address this failure at the level where it originates: the design standard.

Source Document

World Health Organization / Europe

Equity across the regulation, implementation and evaluation of digital health: scoping review

WHO/Europe & Public Health Wales · March 2026
104 pages · 154 studies · CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO

“Post-deployment equity evidence — whether a digital health system actually produces equitable outcomes for the populations it was designed to serve — is nearly absent from the published literature.”

View on who.int

Our Work

Standards. Evidence. Advocacy.

We work at three levels — developing the standard, building the evidence base, and advancing adoption through policy and procurement.

Standards Development

We develop and publish open-access equity-by-design standards that organizations can adopt across health and social service sectors — defining what equitable outcomes look like, how to measure them, and what systems must demonstrate to meet the standard.

Research & Evidence

We conduct and disseminate research on equitable outcomes in digital health, SDoH referral systems, and social prescribing programs — building the evidence base that practitioners, policymakers, and funders need to make better design decisions.

Advocacy & Education

We advocate for equity-by-design requirements in public procurement, federal and state funding programs, and institutional policy — engaging policymakers and funders to advance the standard through the processes that shape the systems communities depend on.

Get Involved

Equity By Design Inc. is in its founding year and actively building relationships with funders, policymakers, researchers, and community health organizations who share the conviction that equitable outcomes must be designed in — not hoped for.

✉️ Contact Us

Equity ByDesign