Can My Health Department Really Improve Inequality Can My Health Department Really Improve Inequality? Making Health Equity Real in Public Health COPPHI Open Forum for Quality Improvement Jacques Colon and Cindan Gizzi April 7, 2016 Cindan: Has everyone signed in?

What We’ll Do Today Share . . . Where You Are with Health Equity Learn . . . about Tacoma-Pierce County’s Health Equity Initiative Plan . . . to Make Health Equity Real at Your Department Cindan

What Do We Mean by Health Equity? Jacques: Before we have some sharing time, let’s define health equity. Definition: All people are able to attain their full health potential. Another way to think about this is to say that all people get what they need to be healthy.

Jacques: One way to think about health equity is to think about fairness across places. Why is it that neighborhoods less than a mile apart can have such drastically different life expectancies? Exercise: Think about what makes a healthy neighborhood to you, when you move what do you value…

Why are there health inequities? Social and economic factors are the single greatest contributor to health. Jacques: Social and economic factors are the single greatest contributor to health, according to the County Health Rankings, the CDC and others. Although we generally think about medicine as a hospital and doctors sector, the truth is that social and economic factors are the biggest contributor to health. Education: What kind of schools do they have? Employment: What kind of job opportunities will there be? Income: How far will my money go?

Jacques

Sharing Time Cindan Have these questions written on a flip chart. Ask participants to turn to one person they don’t know in the room and share their responses. What stage is your agency’s health equity initiative? Infancy………Pre-Teen……..Adult……Wise Elder What is the one best thing your agency has done so far to increase health equity? What do you want most to learn about or figure out in today’s session? To report out, ask raise of hands for each response in Q1. For Q2, do 1-2-4-all and then ask everyone to put their post-it notes up on the flip chart so we can type up and send out to participants. For Q3, ask for what people wanted out of today’s session and write down on flip chart or PPT slide.

Health Equity and PHAB May Include Health Equity: Measure 1.3.1 Cindan

Health Equity and PHAB Must Include Health Equity: Measure 1.1.2 (CHA) Cindan

Tacoma-Pierce County Health Equity Initiative Jacques

Health Equity Assessment One-page infograph Summary report Full report GIS maps (40+) Organizational self-assessment Jacques

Health Equity Components Hiring a health equity coordinator. Developing a cross-divisional health equity team. Conducting staff education. Creating a health equity assessment. Developing a sustained health equity communications strategy. Jacques: Developing a sustained health equity communications strategy including a portfolio of resources.

2016 Health Equity Strategies Staff education. Programmatic technical assistance. Community engagement. Health in all policies. Quality improvement. Jacques

Health Equity and QI What is the intent of QI? This is one strategy to infuse health equity into everyday practice. Performance measures QI projects Health equity is embedded in division quality “circles”. Cindan

Lessons Learned Help people understand the scope of public health. Most public health folks need support to implement health equity practices. Build on what is there. Jacques

Small Group Exercise Cindan