Quick Guide
Definition: Strategically direct staff resources and funding to build organizational capacity to address equity and to focus resources on ways that benefit communities experiencing greatest inequities.
Why It Matters: Organizations can avoid dissipating resources that may be limited and are not allocated to optimal usage when funding and resource allocation integrates an equitable lens.
| Type | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Health Equity Guide: Case Study Rhode Island Braids Funding to Create Health Equity Zone | To address the social determinants of health, leaders of the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) utilized multiple sources of funding to establish “Health Equity Zones.” This case study highlights the ways in which RIDOH leaders increased access to funding and resources to its community partners to enhance population health outcomes. |
| Templates | Santa Clara County Public health : Budget Equity Assessment Tool | This resource, developed by Santa Clara County Public Health, is an example of a racial equity tool that is intended to put out a procedure and a series of inquiries for determining how budget proposals will help or hurt communities, particularly those of color. |
| Templates | Washington State Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises (OMWBE): Inclusion Plan Guide & Template | (Pages 1-2): A guide for public agencies on how to use inclusion plans as part of bidding requirements to increase equitable contracting opportunities. (Pages 3-5): An inclusion plan template form with instructions for the bidder. Bidders submit the plan as part of their bid package when your agency requires inclusion plans on bids. |
| Webinars | Expanding Funding Streams in Local Public Health | This recorded webinar discusses an innovative approach to address financial management in local public health. Participants will learn about how a local health department established a 501(c)(3) to vary their funding streams. This training also includes a discussion on challenges they encountered, successes they have seen due to this unique approach, and lessons learned throughout the process. |
| Webinars | Institute for Local Government : Equitable Funding Strategies for Local Government | This webinar focuses on equitable funding strategies that local governments can implement to operationalize conversations around equity in order to improve community engagement for inclusive decision-making. |
| Guides | Contracting for Equity: Best Local Government Practices that Advance Racial Equity in Government Contracting & Procurement | This issue brief, developed by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), shares common policy and practice strategies local governments can implement to improve contracting for equity within the public sector. This issue brief highlights achievements and barriers jurisdictions face in contracting and procurement practices for equity. |
| Guides | ASTHO: Guidance for Integrating Health Equity Language Into Funding Announcements (February 2018) | This document is intended as a resource to assist state public health agencies in drafting funding announcements involving health equity and related concepts. A number of state and federal agencies have found ways to incorporate health equity into their funding opportunities. |
| Guides | Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO): Centering Equity through Flexible, Reliable Funding | With this guide, GEO seeks to reassert the value of flexible, reliable funding with an updated analysis and set of examples to illustrate how a commitment to flexible, reliable funding can support the sector to be more equitable and community driven in its practice. The report begins with a discussion of why equity and community-driven practice are so vital to our work, followed by an exploration of how flexible, reliable funding contributes to grantmaker and nonprofit effectiveness by strengthening the capacity of nonprofits and catalyzing resilience and longer-term change while centering equitable and inclusive practices. |
| Frameworks | Equity Pyramids | The Equity Pyramid, developed by the Rhode Island Department of Health and modeled after the CDC’s Health Impact Pyramid, is a resource that local health departments can use to prioritize work efforts, equitably allocate funding and resources, and inclusively involve community partners to advance health equity. |
| Articles | Integrating Equity in a Public Health Funding Strategy | This article presents a practical approach for incorporating equity into common and competitive funding procedures for public health programs and demonstrates how integrating equitable strategies can better direct decision-makers in allocating funding and resources. |
| Articles | Investing in Public Health and Community Partnerships Reduced COVID-19–Related Disparities | As Dauphin and Liburd emphasize, the public health system depended on federal funding to focus strategies on populations that experienced the greatest burden of COVID-19; this is particularly important given the chronic resource constraints public health departments face. This collection of articles illustrates that the HDG initiative was a crucial resource across state, tribal, local, and territorial public health departments. It made possible effective community engagement strategies, creative funding, and data-informed prevention and mitigation strategies, and it established CHWs as essential members of the public health workforce. |
| 2023 CA LHJ Examples | Amador County Child Safety & Injury Prevention | Amador County Public Health (ACPH) received a 2-year grant focused on unintentional childhood injury prevention through the Kids' Plates grant. The 3 areas of focus are child passenger safety, bicycle safety, and drowning prevention. The components of the grant include safety education and outreach, as well as providing safety equipment to those in a low socio-economic status or those populations that are non-English speaking. For example, ACPH is hosting local events to check car seats for proper installation, providing educational Bike Rodeos with helmet distributions at local community events, promoting swim skill growth in youth through swim lesson vouchers, and distributing life jackets at local boat launches for these populations. |
| Type | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | San Mateo County Funds Community Implementation Projects to Advance Equity | This case study highlights the Community Implementation Fund developed by the San Mateo County’s Health Policy and Planning Program (HPPP), which recognizes the active leading role of nonprofit organizations in addressing the social determinants of health. Through the Community Implementation Fund, funding priorities are redirected to more policy- oriented projects that improve overall community health outcomes and address inequities within the social determinants of health including housing, education, economics, and neighborhood conditions. |
| Examples | Solano County Leverages Internal Champions and External Experts to Advance Equit | This case study highlights best practices for utilizing existing resources to build internal capacity to advance equity through three partnerships between Solano County Public Health and GARE, Human Impact Partners, and the National Organization of Urban Maternal and Child Health Leaders (CityMatCH). |
| Webinars | Building Internal Infrastructure to Advance Health Equity | This webinar, hosted by Human Impact Partners, focuses on how to build internal infrastructure within local health departments to further drive health equity efforts. The webinar highlights case studies from the Rhode Island Department of Health and New York City Health. Both departments have shifted internal policy priorities and funding to produce upstream change. |
| Webinars | CDPH Equity TA Office Hours: RFP Process | This office hour hosted by the Equity TA team featured guest speakers from Marin and San Diego counties. During the hour, a series of panel questions were asked and shared practices for an equitable Request for Proposals (RFP) process were discussed. |
| Guides | Racial Equity Toolkit: An Opportunity to Operationalize Equity | This toolkit, developed by GARE, is intended for governmental jurisdictions looking to operationalize equity into policies, practices, programs, and budgets. The racial equity toolkit can be utilized at multiple levels (local, regional, state, and federal) and shares guiding questions for considerations. |
| Guides | PHAB: Tools for Service and Resource Sharing | This set of resources from the PHAB Center for Innovation helps public health departments and systems collaborate and share across boundaries to encourage better effectiveness and efficiency in the communities they serve. Service and resource sharing among health departments is when insights, expertise, techniques, and tools are shared across organizational boundaries—and can range from informal to formal approaches. Included via the link is a Service and Resource Sharing Roadmap, guidance for state health departments to implement service sharing from a state-system approach, example MOUs, and more. These tools can help set up community partnerships for success. |
| Guides | Supporting Equitable Community Engagement A Resource for State Health Departments | (Pgs. 17-22) This resource offers guidance drawn from research, interviews, and real examples to help state health departments (SHDs) advance equitable and inclusive community engagement to address SDOH and promote residents’ health and well-being. SHDs have a strong influence in shaping how local health departments (LHDs) engage with communities, and opportunities to leverage that position and influence are discussed at length. SHDs are also uniquely situated to pursue activities that may not traditionally be considered community engagement but are essential to redirecting the focus of community engagement toward equity at state, regional, and local levels. |
| Guides | Equitable Compensation for Community Engagement Guidebook | This toolkit includes practical guidance and approaches for creating an equitable compensation plan for your organization’s community-partnered research projects. |
| Frameworks | Public Health Alliance of Southern CA: Principles for Funding Equity | State funding inequities have placed residents served by local health departments (LHDs) across Southern California at an unfair disadvantage that contributes to persistent gaps in health outcomes and underinvestment in our communities. The principles below provide a framework to achieve more equitable allocations of California Department of Public Health (CDPH) resources across California. |
| Frameworks | City of Long Beach : Equity Investment PowerPoint Slides | This resource provides the PowerPoint slides from the City of Long Beach which defines the health equity framework and RFP process. |
| Frameworks | City of Long Beach Memorandum : Equity Investmanet Framework | This resource is a memorandum released by the City of Long Beach and highlights the equity investment framework and the approach taken by the LHJ. |
| 2023 CA LHJ Examples | San Luis Obispo County Request for Proposals (RFP) Template | San Luis Obispo County included health equity lanuage in the boilerplate RFP template. Language around geographical areas, populations of focus, and community engagement can be found on page 10 of the boilerplate RFP template. For the 2022 American Rescue Plan Act Public Health Impacts Grant Application process, applicants were asked and scored on how their proposed projects would serve populations of focus. Public Health was able to provide 16 grants for a total of $5,925,000 for the October 2022 – Dec 2026 grant period. More detailed information on this criteria can be found in the grant application. |
| 2024 CA LHJ Examples | Sacramento County: Compensating Community Expertise | For the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP), Sacramento County Public Health and its partners are advancing upstream policy and systems changes to address health inequities. Community expertise is being equitably compensated through funding from the CDC Health Equity grant and contributions from Managed Care Plans. Specifically, CHIP Steering Committee members receive stipends for over 40 hours of meeting participation and expert input. Additionally, both youth and adult participants in the Community Leadership Academies are offered stipends. This approach ensures that community experts are fairly compensated for their unique perspectives, which are essential to designing and implementing more effective policies and programs. |
| 2024 CA LHJ Examples | Riverside University Health System – Public Health (RUHS-PH): Equity in Contracts & Procurement | Riverside University Health System – Public Health (RUHS-PH) recently participated in a Contract & Procurement Accelerator to improve internal and external contracting and procurement processes. The Contracts & Procurement unit analyzed barriers to partnership, conducted interviews, and held community focus groups to inform a three-year improvement strategy. Key initiatives include forming an advisory board, launching training programs, and simplifying procedures to support staff and vendors. The Contract & Procurement Improvement Plan’s goal is to enhance the health of Riverside County residents by making contracting and procurement processes more accessible and efficient, while empowering organizations of all sizes to deliver impactful services. |
| Type | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Templates | Participatory Budgeting Outreach Toolkit | This toolkit aims to equip participatory budgeting implementers with a solid grounding in the basic principles of community outreach and a set of concrete tools to guide you. |
| Templates | Good Decision Making in Real Time: Practical Public Health Ethics for Local Health Officials | Facing program cuts, public health departments may be tempted to enter into partnerships that create conflicts of interest that could compromise their core values. Learn how to avoid unethical situations in public health partnerships. |
| Webinars | Addressing Systemic Racism: A Place-based Approach to Building Healthy Communities | In this presentation, Renae Badruzzaman of the Building Healthy Places Network will describe place-based interventions that bring in community development as a key partner to address social determinants of health; explore moving further upstream to systemic, institutional, and structural change; and demonstrate how the public health workforce can adapt to address systemic racism and health inequities. |
| Guides | Research Report: Innovative Community Investment Strategies: The Current State Of Practice And A Vision For Greater Implementation In Southern | This report describes how health departments are uniquely positioned to serve as experts and advisors in community health issues, and can provide key information to underline existing disparities. They are also positioned to coordinate partnerships between different sectors, play an advisory role in decision-making, and ensure investment efforts are aligned with Community Health Assessments and Community Health Needs Assessments, and that these efforts truly advance health equity. Public health departments have expertise on potential government sources of funding and have experience in community engagement. |
| Guides | Braiding and Blending Funds to Support Community Health Improvement: A Compendium of Resources and Examples | This issue brief focuses specifically on two key mechanisms by which to bring funding streams together to support community health improvement – braiding and blending. Braiding refers to coordinating funding and financing from several sources to support a single initiative or portfolio of interventions (usually at the community level). Braiding keeps funding/financing streams in distinguishable strands, so each funder can track resources. On the other hand, blending refers to combining different streams into one pool, under a single set of reporting and other requirements, which makes streams indistinguishable from one another as they are combined to meet needs on the ground that are unexpected or unmet by other sources. |
| Articles | How to Measure Community Engagement and Its Impact | Measuring community engagement helps you track the quality of participatory activities, improve related processes, and show residents and stakeholders how their input influences decision-making. Below we present a set of community engagement metrics, or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)— select those that relate to your end goals and planning directions and set up an infrastructure for tracking (we have some tips on that below). These KPIs for community engagement can be used for a single project and on an organization-wide level. |
| Articles | Braiding and Layering Funding: Doing More With What We Have | Braiding and layering funding demands the active engagement of leadership, a shared sense of purpose and vision, formalized communication and collaborative decision-making processes, well-established administrative procedures for cost allocation and reporting functions, and dedicated staff. |