Health Agency Infrastructure for Addressing Health Equity

Eliminating health disparities has remained a public health priority over the past three decades, but there have been few lasting reductions. Dedicated infrastructure for promoting health equity is one element that can help state health agency efforts to address this issue. In order to identify the level of investment in state and territorial health agencies for addressing health equity, the US Office of Minority Health and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials conducted a survey of state and territorial health agencies (STHAs) to understand and catalogue agencies’ infrastructure and capacity for improving minority health outcomes. The Minority Health Infrastructure Survey was distributed in 2007, 2010, and 2014 to each of the US states, territories, and nations with compacts of free association with the US, as well as the District of Columbia; we will present both current and longitudinal results. We found that although priority populations and level of preparedness to address health disparities varied greatly by area, all responding jurisdictions had in place some infrastructure for addressing health equity. Survey findings elucidate STHAs’ capacity to eliminate health disparities and demonstrate a high and increasing level of attention to health equity among state and territorial governments. This presentation will provide an in-depth account of selected survey results and outline implications for future health equity initiatives at the state and territorial level.