Now's the moment for health equity discussions with Alliance CEO Sarah Hobbs

For this special series, Voices Lifting the Community, HIROC is partnering with the Alliance for Healthier Communities to highlight the work of several of the presenters at their online primary healthcare conference in June. Today we're talking with Sarah Hobbs, CEO of the Alliance, a role she assumed in the fall of 2020. Sarah has worked in community health for over twenty years, most recently as Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Toronto. Being an advocate for health equity for underserved populations is difficult work but Sarah draws inspiration from the Alliance's 110 member centres who actively support marginalized people across Ontario. She's also uplifted by the new ways she's seeing partners collaborating across the system during the pandemic – and the possibilities that now exist to build back a stronger healthcare system that works for everyone. Quotables "We can take the things we talk about and the things we learn and shift them into election strategies, and into conversations we're all having in different ways across the province around how do we build back better." "People are recognizing that health equity needs to be a core component of our health system planning and beyond." "I feel like I've sort of come home in this role to a certain extent." "Being able to engage with member centres, our system partners, and decision-makers to influence what our vision, our strategic directions, what we need to be accountable to as a sector and as an organization, I'm really excited to begin those conversations and develop the plan." "When I think about problems, I think about what haven't we thought about before and what have we tried in the past that might actually be the right solution now. I'm not afraid to do something new."   Mentioned in this Episode: Community Health Equity Builders Program Alliance for Healthier Communities Alliance for Healthier Communities Conference 2021   Access More Interviews with Healthcare Leaders at HIROC.com/podcast Follow us on Twitter, and listen on iTunes. Email us at [email protected].