Health equity and prevention primer: Advancing public health advocacy to eliminate inequities in health and safety

Policy development is a core public health function and a strategy for transforming community conditions to foster equitable health and safety outcomes. However, it is often underutilized by local and state health departments. Prevention Institute, with guidance from National Association of County and City Health Officials'(NACCHO) Health Equity and Social Justice Strategic Direction Team, set out to understand and address the capacity needs of health departments for addressing inequities. Literature and document reviews and semi-structured interviews with a representative national sample of health departments aimed to uncover recurring themes in barriers, assets, and goals of health departments related to health equity. The predominant themes that emerged centered on the need for multi-sector collaboration; building awareness of the relationship between social determinants of health, health inequities, and the advocacy role of public health departments; the importance of policy to advance health equity; and the role of leadership in pushing forward an equity-based agenda. In this presentation, Prevention Institute will share an online learning tool, Health Equity and Prevention Primer (HEPP), consisting of an equity-focused curriculum and collection of resources. It utilizes an innovative technology-based approach for bringing an equity lens to the field of public health. It is particularly designed to overcome the time and budgetary constraints that many public health departments and related sectors face when attempting to engage in primary prevention for building equity. Embedded in HEPP are prevention frameworks, promising practices and tools and resources for building their capacity to achieve equitable health and safety outcomes.