Partnerships, collaborations, and convergences: Building social and health equity, from the ground up

Richard Wilkinson's recent book The Spirit Level deploys extensive, international data to demonstrate that social and economic inequity play a fundamental role in a broad array of health outcomes. In the past decade, Partnership for the Public's Health (PPH) has served as program office for two major initiatives that put community organizations and residents at the center of place-based policy change to improve community health. Through the Partnership for the Public's Health Initiative and the Healthy Eating, Active Communities program, we have fostered, and seen the power of bringing local youth, residents and community organizations to the table as equals with local and state institutions and stakeholders. Through effective partnerships and collaborations, community voices grow strong, and new alliances produce concrete changes to local systems and policies that shape the social determinants of health. As coordinating office for California Convergence, we have built an evolving infrastructure that takes this to a state level, promoting more equitable state and national policy change, by linking community leaders across the state, and creating mechanisms that strengthen the ability of community voices to shape policy directions. To be effective, such efforts must be deliberate, sustained, and supported; relationships and trust must be cultivated; and the challenges raised by differences in power and status addressed. This presentation offers examples and lessons learned from our decade supporting community-led change, and presents a vision for building strong communities, connected in robust networks, to advance local, state and national policy for health and social equity.