With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Prevention Institute initiated Partnering for Health Equity: Grassroots Organizations on Collaborating with Public Health Agencies to better understand community perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, facilitators, and barriers to working with public health agencies to advance health equity. Prevention Institute spoke to organizational leaders working in grassroots, base-building, and community-based organizations, and asked them to share their experiences and ideas about the skills, strengths, and limitations of effectively working with public health agencies on initiatives, campaigns, or broader norms-change efforts aimed at eliminating health inequities through the production of more just systems, institutions, policies, and practices.
This report highlights what emerged during our conversations. Our starting point for this project was the recognition that local and state health departments have an important role to play in advancing health equity. These agencies all have a health mandate and we see evidence of local health departments that already fully embrace the charge to undo structural and institutional barriers that stand in the way of all people achieving optimal health. We also knew that there were some places around the country where neither a focus on racial equity nor health equity has taken root within the health mandate of local or state jurisdictions. We wanted to learn about how features of the political landscape, funding, staff skills, leadership, and partnerships influence the ability of community-based organizations to work effectively with public health agencies to narrow systemic gaps in health fueled by racial injustices and made evident in health inequities. (abbreviated author introduction)
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