HEALTH EQUITY
NACDD Action on Health Equity
Listen to the Health Equity Council’s new podcast series, Race Toward Health,”
featuring national experts on health and racial equity.
Increasing Public Health's Capacity to Address Health Equity
The NACDD Health Equity Council works to increase public health workforce capacity to address health equity by advocating for supportive funding, identifying actionable strategies, highlighting promising practices, and making targeted recommendations that can improve organizational competency to address health equity. For example, the Council-developed tool, Moving to Institutional Equity: A Tool to Address Racial Equity for Public Health Practitioners, guides users through a process to identify internal policies and practices that influence the way racial equity is expressed in public health operations, projects, and decisions. A pilot project on its use is underway in five states.
View the new Health Equity Primer.
The Council also developed the Health Equity Primer. The purpose of this primer is to provide the reader with action steps to begin or advance work in organizational health equity. This primer lays out a foundation of health equity through well-defined terminology, evidence-based theory, and historical context. Through case studies, the primer offers examples of how to begin or advance health equity work. The goal is to offer a deeper understanding of health equity and the processes by which to achieve it, thereby increasing the reader’s confidence in pursuing health equity within an organization.
Through the Applying the Health Equity Lens training at the 2017 Chronic Disease Academy, the Council sought to enhance the essential contribution of state governments to achieve of equitable health outcomes. The Council provided a similar Social Determinants of Health and Applying a Health Equity Lens session as part of the CDC Division of Population Health Project Officers Advancing Health Equity Training Series.
2018 Council-sponsored ‘Building the Narrative to Address Root Causes for Health Disparities and State Examples’ webinar reviewed the ways public health chronic disease prevention and health promotion practitioners can create opportunities for building a public narrative about the root causes of health disparities.
By providing technical assistance to NACDD consultants and members, the Council influences the integration of health equity concepts into NACDD proposals, projects, and initiatives. The NACDD Health Equity Council wrote the journal article, An Assessment of Funding and Other Capacity Needs for Health Equity Programming Within State-Level Chronic Disease Programs, describing the funding and other capacity needs for health equity programming in state chronic disease programs. Written and published in partnership with the HHS Office of Minority Health, the article is available in a 2017 special issue of the Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice.