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

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.