Health equity is often confused with simply raising the average level of health across a population, but the two goals are not the same. A population's average can improve while the gap between its most and least healthy groups stays exactly as wide, or even widens, if the gains are not shared evenly.
Closing that gap usually requires deliberately directing resources toward the groups facing the greatest barriers, whether those barriers are financial, geographic, or related to trust built up, or eroded, over a long history with the health system. Equal treatment for everyone is not the same as equitable treatment when starting points differ.
The distinction matters in practice because policies aimed only at the average can quietly leave the most vulnerable groups behind while still reporting an improving national picture, which is why equity focused approaches specifically track the gap itself, not just the overall trend line moving upward.