227314 : Transforming Public Health Practice to Eliminate Health Inequities: Overview of a Local Health Department Regional Collaborative

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 : 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM

Saleena Gupte, DrPH, MPH , Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, Oakland, CA
Sandi Galvez, MSW , Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, Oakland, CA
Bob Prentice, PhD , Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, Oakland, CA
This presentation will describe the activities of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), a collaboration of eleven local health departments in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a mission to “transform public health practice for the purpose of eliminating health inequities using a broad spectrum of strategies that create healthy communities.” The presentation will review BARHII's history and the conceptual framework it developed to guide its work. It will also describe a committee structure focused on re-thinking the role of data in public health departments, relationships public health departments have with communities, strategies to improve the built environment, practice that addresses the social determinants of health inequities and approaches to changing the structure and culture of local health departments to carry out that work. Additionally, the presentation will provide an overview of publications and policy advocacy activities that have been produced since BARHII's inception in 2005.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
• Identify the benefits of addressing health inequities through a regional collaborative; • Analyze a framework for public health practice that addresses health inequities; • Describe strategies to transform public health practice that corresponds to that framework; and, • Describe strategies to build the local health department capacity to carry out that practice.

Keywords: Community-Based Public Health, Health Departments

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a senior associate for BARHII, and oversee the work of several committees
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.