Establishing the Center for Health Equity at a Local Health Department

Healthy People 2010 list two overarching goals for the nation: Improve Quality and Years of Healthy Life, and Eliminate Health Disparities. The existence of differences in health and health outcomes among certain racial and ethnic groups reflect and reveal many forms of institutionalized inequalities and inequities. Contemporary thinking links these inequities to a multitude of factors but increasingly, the evidence points to the social determinants of health as major determinants of individual behavior and exposure to differential environmental risks. Local health departments have a unique opportunity to be a major force in the elimination of those inequities through its primary core functions of assessment, assurance and policy development. In that regard the Metro Louisville Department of Public Health and Wellness has created the Center for Health Equity to address the social determinants of health, empower communities to address these issues, retrain the public health workforce, and restructure its organization to bring about health equity through a process of social justice. This presentation will provide an “upstream analysis” of the causation of health inequities and describe our experience in developing the Center within a governmental unit in a traditionally focused health department. It will demonstrate how focusing on creating health equity can be a strategic way to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of the health system and the community at large. The presentation will emphasize the challenges, constraints, successes, as well as the strategies and anticipated outcomes.