Using a Health in All Policies approach to integrate health and equity into land use, transportation, and planning grant programs

California is the first state in the nation to establish a formal high-level body focused on improving government processes through a Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach. Now in its sixth year, the California HiAP Task Force has made important strides in integrating health and equity into State funded grant programs, projects, and strategies.

States provide grant funding to local jurisdictions for land use, transportation, and planning purposes. These grant programs impact health by shaping the built environments where people live, work, learn, and play. In California, as a result of the HiAP Task Force’s collaborative work building understanding for why health and equity considerations are integral to achieve progress on other state priorities related to green-house gas reduction, revitalizing community and urban centers, and more, there is strong interest in embedding explicit considerations of health into “non-health” programs and grants. With little precedent to guide these processes, the California HiAP Task Force is serving as a learning laboratory for how to integrate health and equity into land use, transportation, and planning grant programs. The presenter will 1) describe the approaches and tools used developing grant criteria, including health and equity needs assessments, health metrics, and requirements for partnership with local health departments, 2) share incites on the key concerns and needs voiced by “non-health” agency partners and stakeholders in this process, and 3) provide lessons learned by the California HiAP Task Force relative to establishing quantitative and qualitative measures of impact.