Creating a community-driven policy advocacy infrastructure to address ethnic health disparities

For Americans of African ancestry, health disparate outcomes continue to reflect disproportionately higher mortality across all preventable health conditions. In San Bernardino County, California, the average age of death for the Black population is 59 years. Disparate health outcomes identified by the affected population in a major countywide health planning project indicated complex factors negatively affected Black health. One major factor was a lack of “political will” and significant investment by the County Supervisors to aggressively address health issues of local residents. To bring about environmental structural changes, a community-driven infrastructure was developed to address policy issues that affect the Black population. Current policies needed to be analyzed to determine the effect on Black health and their communities. A health policy analyst was hired to create appropriate public health policy language, to monitor policy effect and outcomes. Additionally, relationships with key community stakeholders, policy-makers, and health industry leaders were created to develop a local infrastructure to address health disparities. State elected officials in the California Legislative Black Caucus and the California Department of Health Office of Multicultural Health, as well as the local ethnic medical society, were included in the local infrastructure to garner leverage for advocacy. This paper will discuss the community-driven health policy advocacy infrastructure and training, advocacy strategies implemented by a local coalition of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans to ensure medical and allied health education for ethnic minorities, and policy analysis of the Governor's proposed health reform package on the Black community.