To provide a channel for political empowerment of disenfranchised communities by power sharing. We maintain the following five core guiding principles; Humility, Empowerment, Access, Relationship, and Social Justice (HEARS), to achieve its mission.
- Humility
- To recognize the limitations of our knowledge and perspectives – whether academicians, policy makers or community organizations – in addressing complex social forces
- To maintain a focus that allows us to develop mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic advocacy partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined communities
- Empowerment
- To work with communities to reach their full potential in communicating and addressing the solutions to health disparities
- To provide a channel for political empowerment of disenfranchised communities by power sharing
- Access
- To broaden the concept of access to address the fact that what limits access is more than a matter of adequate insurance and transportation
- To recognize the verbal and nonverbal communication to under-represented populations, on a societal and systemic level, has greater importance in the equation of health outcomes.
- This should include, but not be limited to, a focus on communication in terms of literacy, English proficiency on the part of the patient, and cultural appropriateness on the part of the provider in the medical encounter
- Relationship
- To advocate for health promotion as a function of building relationships of trust and mutual respect
- To promote sustained partnerships through the collaborative efforts of building community
- Social Justice
- There is a direct relationship between poverty, discrimination, wealth and health outcomes
- Health disparities are the outcome of social inequities and social injustice.
- TCHI maintains the focus that health disparities are a matter of social injustice, which is an ethical and moral imperative to be addressed
