Crain's Honors MetroHealth's Equity Leaders
Crain’s Cleveland Business recently honored two transformative leaders at MetroHealth for the key role they play in advancing equity and inclusion here and the broader community.
Both Margie Diaz, Director, Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, and Alan Nevel, Chief Equity Officer, are winners of Crain’s 2022 Excellence in HR Awards in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion category. Winners and finalists were selected by a panel of outside judges, all of whom had been honored by Crain’s in the past. Click here to see the full slate of winners.
Diaz was honored for the role she plays in elevating equity across all system services and improving patient care and employee excellence. That important work includes educating personnel about health disparities across underserved patient populations.
“Nurses are famously innovative, and the best ones have an innate ability to meet people where they are and listen with empathy. Margie is one of the very best ones,” Nevel wrote in his nomination of Diaz. “She grew up in Clark-Fulton, and her passion for MetroHealth and its mission is quite simply woven into the fabric of her life.”
Nevel was honored for, as MetroHealth CEO Dr. Akram Boutros wrote in the nomination, “infusing the entire organization with a commitment to equity and justice.” In his role, Nevel works across administration, clinical departments and programs to eliminate systemic disparities and inequities that affect patients, employees and the community.
Over the last 12 months, for example, he forged a partnership with Saving Our Daughters, a movement to support the mental health of adolescent girls, and helped lead MetroHealth’s first Minority Men’s Health Fair, an event that brought free screenings and education to more than 1,000 individuals in Cuyahoga County.
“Alan and his team continue to educate our employees on how to overcome unconscious bias and achieve health equity, to encourage them to bring their best selves to work every day and to prize differences as a source of strength, and to challenge all of us at MetroHealth to make every person and every community we touch healthier,” Dr. Boutros wrote in the nomination.
Founded in 1837, MetroHealth is leading the way to a healthier you and a healthier community through service, teaching, discovery, and teamwork. Cuyahoga County’s public, safety-net hospital system, MetroHealth meets people where they are, providing care through five hospitals, four emergency departments and more than 20 health centers. Each day, our nearly 9,000 employees focus on providing our community with equitable healthcare — through patient-focused research, access to care, and support services — that seeks to eradicate health disparities rooted in systematic barriers. For more information, visit metrohealth.org.
