Addressing the root causes of health inequities through a local policy platform

Despite improvements in health status across all groups, large inequities in health outcomes by income and ethnicity persist. To address these inequities, the Alameda County Public Health Department is expanding beyond traditional boundaries of service delivery to interventions focused on the social determinants of health, including establishing a local policy platform. We developed a successful and replicable process for creating a local policy platform designed to improve health by addressing the root causes of health inequities, including housing, education, transportation, land use, economic development, and incarceration. Support through Place Matters, a national initiative of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Health Policy Institute, helped further project planning. To inform our effort, we completed assessments linking each policy area to health inequities, exposing causes and consequences of problems, and identifying policy solutions. Additionally, these assessments included baseline data collection and stakeholder interviews grounding information in the experiences of disproportionately impacted communities. Using these findings, we are establishing interdisciplinary workgroups to engage communities in a process of policy prioritization and to coordinate the community-driven interventions. We are using population-based indicators for intervention evaluation. Our successes to date include providing testimonies and expert advice in these policy areas and helping to create a tool for measuring policies' equity impacts. This session will explore the internal conditions necessary for establishing our local policy initiative, including administrative and resource support. Additionally, we will review a case study demonstrating our process for creating a local policy platform, lessons learned, and future directions.