Quick Guide
Definition: Collaborate with other agencies and organizations across sectors to amplify equity and address the root causes related to the environmental, social, and economic conditions which impact health (social determinants of health).
Why It Matters: Addressing the social determinants of health requires health departments and other related sectors pool resources and collectively advocate for policy change.
| Type | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Examples of Communities Tackling Health Inequity | The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine presents Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity, a landmark report that examines the structural factors driving health inequities in the United States and outlines actionable strategies for achieving health equity through community-led efforts. The report features nine in-depth case studies from across the country, including spotlights in Fresno and Oakland California. Fresno’s example illustrates how local coalitions can address entrenched disparities by focusing on environmental justice, economic opportunity, and civic engagement. The report emphasizes the importance of cross-sector collaboration, community empowerment, and policy change. Recommendations are included to guide public health professionals, policymakers, and community leaders in creating conditions where all people can thrive. |
| Templates | Collaborative Health-A Health in All Policies Presentation | This customizable PowerPoint template helps to build support for Health in All Policies (HiAP). The package for this resource also includes a guide on how to support HiAP initiatives in government, which is a companion to the template. It is recommended that organizations review both before giving the presentation to internal or external partners. |
| Trainings | Using Message Framing Tools to Build and Suistain Cross-Sector Partnerships | This training provides public health professionals with messaging tools for effective communication with other sectors. It describes what framing is and why it is important when communicating to external stakeholders. It takes about 30 minutes to complete and provides participants with a certificate upon completion. |
| Webinars | Cross Sector Collaboration Making Partnerships Work for Your Community | This webinar provides real life examples of cross-sector partnerships along with resources and tools to strengthen these partnerships. |
| Webinars | Fostering Community Partnerships to Advance Health Equity | This webinar describes how the Alameda County Public Health Department has worked with the housing sector to advance population health. |
| Webinars | Health Equity in Cross Sector Partnerships | This training provides examples of cross sector partnerships and explains why these partnerships are essential to advancing health equity. |
| Webinars | Strategies and Resources for Working Across Sectors | In the final episode of Keeping Up With Public Health: Cross-Sector Collaborations (Season 3)., we review the value of working across sectors for developing public health infrastructure and advancing health equity, and discuss general approaches to cross-sectoral work and relationship building. Resources for engaging in cross-sectoral work are shared. Guests: Ruben Cantu, Melissa Jones, MPA. |
| Guides | Grassroots Organizations on Collaborating with Public Health Agencies | This guide describes how grassroots organizations and public health agencies can work together to advance health equity and racial justice. The document describes processes for bringing intentionality to agreements, leveraging community expertise, and integrating equity into organizational goals. Community spotlights are also included for each section, including one from Monterey County, California. |
| Guides | The Guide to Cross-Sector Collaboration | This guide provides actionable steps on how to find, build and develop cross-sector partnerships. |
| Guides | Stanford Social Innovation Review-Cross Sector Leadership | This interactive guide covers several topics including the need for cross-sector leadership, essential skills for leaders, creating a culture of collaboration and establishing cross-sector networks. It also contains profiles of leaders across industries (e.g., business, non- profit, government etc.). |
| Guides | Initiating Cross- Sector Partnerships to Advance Population Health | This guide provides examples of cross-sector partnerships collaborating to address the social determinants of health. The document goes step by step into finding the right partner, creating a lasting relationship, and creating lasting goals within the collaboration. |
| Frameworks | Prevention Institute: Collaboration Multiplier | Collaboration Multiplier is a framework and tool for analyzing collaborative efforts across sectors. It is designed to serve as a starting point for understanding the contributions of different fields and for building effective interdisciplinary efforts through partnership. |
| Articles | Partners in Promoting Health Equity in Communities | The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine presents a chapter titled Partners in Promoting Health Equity in Communities, which explores the diverse roles that cross-sector partners play in advancing health equity. The chapter emphasizes that public health agencies, community-based organizations, businesses, educational institutions, and financial institutions each bring unique assets to equity-focused work. Through real-world examples, it illustrates how partnerships grounded in shared values, trust, and community engagement can address the social determinants of health. The chapter also highlights the importance of inclusive leadership and sustained collaboration. Recommendations are included to guide communities in building effective, equity-centered partnerships that improve health outcomes and foster systemic change. |
| 2023 CA LHJ Examples | Kern County Health Equity Partnership's Subcommittee Day | The Kern Health Equity Partnership was founded and formalized during the first year of CERI, bringing together trusted community leaders, champions, and partners across sectors, to share space in listening, collaborating and to ensure work is continuously meeting the needs of their communities. Their aim is to expand access to quality health and improved the overall health of all Kern County Residents. |
| Type | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Profile: Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf | This example profiles Libby Schaaf, former mayor of Oakland, California, highlighting her evolution as a cross-sector leader committed to civic innovation and community service. A central feature of the article is Oakland Cares, a volunteer program Schaaf co-founded with her mother to connect busy professionals with one-time volunteer opportunities. This initiative served as a catalyst for Schaaf’s transition from corporate law to public service, illustrating how localized, accessible engagement can spark broader systems change. The profile traces her journey through nonprofit leadership and into government, emphasizing the role of cross-sector collaboration in addressing complex urban challenges. Reflections and recommendations are included to inspire leaders seeking to build community-centered programs that bridge sectors and scale impact. |
| Templates | Collaborative Effectiveness Assessment Activity | The Prevention Institute presents a practical worksheet designed to help coalitions and cross-sector partnerships assess the effectiveness of their collaboration. The tool allows for reflection on group dynamics, shared goals, and the quality of engagement among partners. It guides participants through a series of prompts to evaluate trust, communication, leadership, and decision-making processes within their collaborative. The tool is intended to support continuous improvement by identifying strengths and areas for growth. Recommendations are included to help public health and community-based organizations strengthen their partnerships and advance equity-focused outcomes through more intentional, inclusive collaboration. |
| Trainings | An Overview of Public Health Reaching Across Sectors | This training course takes about 30 minutes to complete and discusses why communication is essential to sustaining cross-sector partnerships. |
| Webinars | Engaging Across Sectors and Disciplines to Build Community and Capacity for Health Equity | This webinar details why developing cross- sector partnerships are essential to advancing health equity. The webinar focuses on understanding the concept of health disparities, building a community, and case studies of partnering for equity. |
| Webinars | Art and Public Health | The arts have long been used to communicate messages, raise awareness, and bring about change. Hear more about collaborative projects connecting art to health, resiliency, and advocacy. Discuss ways that art may be incorporated into health promotion, advocacy, and social justice. |
| Webinars | PPEC Spring Webinar Series: Supporting your Engagement Work through Evaluation | Evaluation can play an important role in supporting your engagement work through goal setting, learning and improvement, and impact assessment. In this webinar we collaborated with Maureen Smith, Patient Partner and Chair of OSSU’s Patient Partner Working Group, to introduce participants to the growing number of engagement evaluation tools, discuss the importance of choosing the right tools for your purpose and stage of engagement activity, work through case examples of how to implement different evaluation tools in different contexts, and reflect on the current state of public and patient engagement evaluation. |
| Webinars | Evaluating Your Engagement Activities | Learn how to design and implement a strategy to evaluate engagement activities and how to participate in a process of continuous learning and improvement of engagement practices. |
| Guides | Developing Effective Coalitions: An Eight Step Guide | This guide provides actionable steps for building effective partnerships. |
| Articles | Supporting Change Agents Across Sectors to Improve Health and Equity in Rural Communities | This article describes how cross sector collaboration is important to improving health and equity in rural communities. Rural Resource. |
| Articles | Government + research + philanthropy: How cross‐ sector partnerships can improve policy decisions and action | Researchers often lament that government decision‐makers do not generate or use research evidence. People in government often lament that researchers are not responsive to government's needs. Yet there is increasing enthusiasm in government, research, and philanthropy sectors for developing, investing in, and sustaining government‐research partnerships that focus on government's use of evidence. There is, however, scant guidance about how to do so. To help fill the gap, this essay addresses (1) Why government‐research partnerships matter; (2) Barriers to developing government‐research partnerships; (3) Strategies for addressing the barriers; (4) The role of philanthropy in government‐research partnerships. The momentum to develop, invest in, and sustain cross‐sector partnerships that advance government's use of evidence is exciting. It is especially encouraging that there are feasible and actionable strategies for doing so. |
| 2023 CA LHJ Examples | The Live Well Humboldt Initiative | The Live Well Humboldt (LWH) initiative is centered around the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) priority areas (substance use, suicide prevention, housing instability and homelessness, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)). Equity goals are incorporated in the 2022-2027 CHIP, and Humboldt County is working to integrate them into the next Community Health Assessment (CHA). Previous results from this assessment have prompted them to strategize how to amplify equity and collaborate with other agencies across sectors. Humboldt County has contracted with professional equity consultants to provide trainings and technical assistance to dive deeper into co-development strategies. |
| 2023 CA LHJ Examples | Riverside County Partnerships | To lead equity efforts for Riverside University Health System – Public Health (RUHS-PH), a diverse Health Equity Team was established whose fulltime job is to improve health equity in Riverside County while engaging with the community and multi-sector partners. Initiatives they have spearheaded include: the Riverside County Health Coalition, the Equity and Justice Taskforce, Health Equity Policy Action Plan, the Advancing Health and Racial Equity Report, a Health Communications team, and the Community COVID-19 Impact Hub. |
| Type | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | A Decade of Advocacy: The Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments | A Decade of Advocacy is a case study of the Strategic Alliance, a network of 15 California-based organizations that came together to promote healthy food and activity environments. This document provides a roadmap for effective collaboration, and highlights the impact a group of organizations can have when working together to effect change. The document answers a series of critical questions, including: What does it take to reframe the debate around community health and well-being from a focus on the individual to one that includes environmental influences, corporate practices, and government responsibility? What strategies hold the greatest promise for improving the landscape of opportunities wherein people make decisions about what to eat and whether or not to be active on a daily basis? How can advocacy groups work together to most effectively achieve shared goals? |
| Examples | Rebuilding Neighborhoods Initiative | The Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) presents Rebuilding Neighborhoods, a strategic initiative launched in 2020 to address the intersecting challenges of housing affordability and gentrification in Greater Boston. The initiative brought together community organizers, small business owners, and leaders from the technology and innovation sectors to co-develop equitable, community-centered solutions. The project aimed to articulate a shared vision for equitable housing, generate actionable recommendations, and establish metrics for progress. The guide highlights the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations and reframes the crisis as an opportunity for cross-sector collaboration to build more inclusive, resilient communities. Recommendations are included to support equitable development that centers the voices and needs of historically marginalized residents. |
| Examples | Solano County Leverages Internal Champions and External Experts to Advance Equity | The Public Health Division of Solano County, California, is leveraging the commitment of internal equity champions and the work of national organizations to address historically limited capacity and limited resources to focus on the social determinants of health. Together, the Public Health Division and its national partners are building internal capacity to advance equity in a county with urban, suburban, and rural areas. |
| Examples | Creating a Cross Sector Leadership Network | This is a case study on the James Irvine Foundation’s New Leadership Network, which explores the development of a cross-sector leadership initiative in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The article focuses on the challenges faced by communities in Fresno—such as high poverty, poor air and water quality, and limited philanthropic infrastructure—and the need for collaborative leadership to address these systemic issues. Through interviews with over 50 local leaders, the initiative uncovered barriers like siloed sectors and the exclusion of emerging nonprofit leaders from influential networks. The guide shares lessons on building trust, fostering civic innovation, and creating inclusive leadership structures that span government, business, and nonprofit sectors. Recommendations are included to support communities in designing leadership networks that can drive equitable, region-wide change. |
| Examples | Supporting Safe and Affordable Housing in Alameda County, CA | The Alameda County Public Health Department serves as an example for how to work across sectors (e.g., housing) in order to advance population health. |
| Trainings | Promoting Health Equity by Uniting Sectors Around Shared Data | This webinar discusses best practices for sharing data across sectors in order to advance health equity. |
| Articles | Mobilizing Cross- Sector Collaborations to Improve Population Health in U.S. Rural Communities: A Qualitative Stud | This study provides four case studies of rural communities working to advance health equity through cross-sector partnerships and provides rural specific strategies. Rural Resource. |
| Articles | Improving Cross- Sector Collaborations in Place-Based Population Health Projects | This article provides a framework and recommendations on how to navigate cross-sector partnerships in complex population health projects. |
| Articles | Expanding opportunities for chronic disease prevention for Hispanics: the Better Together REACH program in Pennsylvania | Hispanics in Lebanon and Reading, Pennsylvania, experience high levels of socioeconomic and health disparities in risk factors for chronic disease. For the past 4 years, our coalition has leveraged strong community collaborations to implement and evaluate culturally-tailored practice- and evidence-based activities aimed at increasing physical activity, healthy nutrition, and community-clinical linkages. This community case report summarizes the context where our overall program was implemented, including the priority population, target geographical area, socioeconomic and health disparities data, community-academic coalition, conceptual model, and details the progress of the Better Together initiative in the two communities impacted. |