New Pathways for Successfully Reducing Health Inequities Experienced by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community

In this Invited Commentary, the author briefly reviews 3 articles from this issue of Academic Medicine that serve as a welcome addition to the literature in the quest to reduce the significant health inequities experienced by the Deaf and hard of hearing (DHoH) community. The author connects these articles to his own story as a DHoH medical student navigating the medical education system and also to his perspective as a practicing family medicine physician in a rural community health center. The path to bridging these health inequities is multifactorial. This includes identifying and eliminating barriers to increasing DHoH physician representation in the workforce, enhancing DHoH cultural competency in medical education, and using advances in technology through the creation of communication access plans and language access teams in hospitals and medical clinics for DHoH patients.