Quick Guide
Guides
guides
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Creating a Culture of Belonging : A Guide for Retention | This guide, from the State of Colorado, provides information on why retaining a diverse workforce is important, initial steps and measurements organizations can take, and onboarding new employees into a culture of belonging. |
| Early | Ensuring a Diverse Workforce : A Guide for Inclusive Hiring Practices | This guide, from the State of Colorado, provides several recommendations to ensure the workforce represents the community it serves. Included are resource such as a position description checklist, job announcement checklist, sample interview questions and more. |
| Early | Ready For Equity In Workforce Development- Racial Equity Readiness Assessment Tool | This is a comprehensive racial equity readiness assessment tool designed to help workforce development organizations evaluate and improve their programs, operations, and culture to advance racial equity. It provides practical solutions, guiding principles, and a detailed assessment framework to address racial inequities and enhance service delivery for clients of color. |
| Strong | Making Alternative Credentials Work : A New Strategy for HR Professionals | This guide includes how employers and employees view and value alternative credentials and explores workforce readiness alternatives. |
| Strong | Tools to Support Effective Workforce Development Planning | This document offers guidance to facilitate intentional planning efforts, including recruitment and retention resources. The Workforce Development Planning Tool Matrix outlines tools and resources to build a strong and qualified public health workforce equipped with equity-focused competencies and capabilities for core public health operations. |
| Strong | Increasing Organizational Diversity- A Digital Recruitment and Retention Guide for Public Health Officials | This digital guide will equip hiring officials and managers with practical strategies to foster organizational diversity. By implementing these strategies, organizations can ensure their workforce reflects their communities, enhancing organizational effectiveness and promoting equitable healthcare access racially and ethnically diverse populations. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | ASTHO Health Equity and Public Health Accreditation Guide | This is an introduction to equity from the Association of State and Territorial Health Offices (ASTHO) during the process of public health accreditation. The guide reviews how to integrate equity into your health department for accreditation, with real world examples from other health departments. |
| Established | Learning Agenda for Systems Change: A Toolkit for Public Health, Partners, and Communities | This toolkit uses transformative learning as a driver for equity-focused systems change. It provides a framework, practical tools, and resources to help organizations and communities implement effective strategies for public health improvement. |
| Established | ASTHO Workforce Development Plan Toolkit | The Association of State and Territorial Health Offices (ASTHO) Workforce Development Guide gives examples and resources on how to integrate equity into an organization's workforce development plan. A notable example to review includes Ohio State's workforce development plan, which requires staff to receive health equity training. |
| Established | Affinity Group Field Guide | This guide provides a comprehensive framework for establishing and maintaining affinity groups, focusing on promoting equity and inclusion within organizations. It includes practical steps, best practices, and resources to support the formation and sustainability of these groups. |
| Established | Mentor Handbook | This handbook provides a comprehensive guide for mentors and mentees, outlining the roles, responsibilities, and best practices for effective mentoring relationships. It includes practical advice, tools, and resources to support the development and success of mentoring programs. |
| Established | Learning Agenda for Systems Change: A Toolkit for Public Health, Partners, and Communities | This toolkit is designed to support public health professionals in using transformative learning as a driver for equity-focused systems change. |
| Strong | University of Kansas Community Toolbox: Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Your Community | This guide reflects on addressing equity in a community once organizational staff receives a general introduction to equity and equity efforts gain leadership support. |
| Strong | Language Justice Toolkit | This toolkit provides a comprehensive guide to promoting language equity and inclusion within organizations and communities. It includes practical strategies, best practices, and resources to support the implementation of language justice principles, ensuring that all individuals have equal access to communication and participation. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Effective Public Engagement through Strategies and Communication | This guide serves as a tip sheet and offers communication strategies that local governments can incorporate into public engagement efforts. The sheet shares steps organizations can take before, during, and after engagement. |
| Early | Engaging Your Community : A Toolkit for Partnership, Collaboration, and Action | This toolkit is designed to help organizations build effective partnerships, carry out creative outreach initiatives, and develop persuasive communications that speak to various community groups and populations. The toolkit provides instructions for conducting self-evaluations of a partnership, as well as outreach techniques to involve community residents and other organizations. It also provides resources for enhancing these tactics to increase organizational capacity. |
| Early | Integration to Improve Health: Partnership Models between CBOs and Healthcare Organizations | This resource focuses on common approaches organizations can take by working together to approve health outcomes through service models, financial relationships, data, partnerships, and governance. Each category has a variety of real-life examples that serve as additional learning opportunities for readers. |
| Early | Planning Public Engagement: Key Questions for Local Officials | This guide provides 14 key questions for local agencies to consider when engaging with the public. |
| Early | Promoting Effective Public Participation at Governing Body Meetings: Opportunities to Deepen Public Participation and Trust | This publication provides suggestions to improve the process of receiving public input during local agency meetings and opportunities to deepen public participation and trust. |
| Early | Resources for Collaboration and Power Sharing | This guide is for health departments seeking to share authority with community power-building organizations (CPBOs) and provides action-oriented steps to improve collaboration. |
| Early | Resources for Collaborations and Power Sharing Between Government Agencies and Community Power- Building Organizations | This guide outlines the benefits of partnerships between government entities and community power-building groups and offers a variety of models for collaboration. |
| Early | Strengthening and Sustaining Public Engagement: A Planning Guide for Communities | This guide instructs local governments, elected officials, and/or school systems on how to strengthen and sustain public engagement in planning strategies. Considerations such as types of engagement, when to prioritize engagement, and how to build more robust engagement methods are included. |
| Early | NACCHO Communications Plan Workbook | The Communications Plan Workbook by NACCHO provides a structured, five-step approach to help local health departments design effective communication strategies. The plan guides users through: (1) establishing clear and measurable goals, (2) defining key audiences, (3) identifying core messages, (4) creating a tactical outreach plan with appropriate communication channels, and (5) specifying a timeline for implementation. This resource emphasizes strategic planning to ensure communication efforts are targeted, efficient, and aligned with public health objectives in order to create networks for information sharing with partners. |
| Early | Evaluating Your Communication Plan | This NACCHO guide supports local health departments in strengthening their communication efforts through structured evaluation. Organized into key sections—Why Evaluate, What to Evaluate, How to Evaluate, and Using Evaluation Results—the document walks users through the rationale for evaluation, selecting meaningful metrics, applying practical methods, and translating findings into improved strategies. It emphasizes continuous learning, stakeholder engagement, and aligning communication goals with measurable outcomes to enhance the quality and impact of public health messaging. |
| Early | Prowers County Public Health Risk Communication Plan | Developed by Prowers County, Colorado, this plan outlines strategies for delivering timely, accurate, and accessible information to vulnerable or special populations during public health emergencies. It emphasizes identifying subpopulations with unique communication needs and tailoring outreach accordingly. The plan serves as a practical example for local health departments, highlighting the importance of inclusive planning, culturally appropriate messaging, and coordination with trusted community partners to ensure no group is left behind in crisis communication efforts. |
| Strong | Building Community Capacity to Shape Outcomes of Health Equity Work | From the Rural Health Information Hub, this section emphasizes the importance of building community capacity as a foundation for advancing health equity in rural areas. It outlines strategies for strengthening local leadership, fostering collaboration across sectors, and ensuring that community members—especially those most affected by health disparities—are meaningfully engaged in decision-making. The toolkit highlights how investing in relationships, trust, and shared power can lead to more sustainable, community-driven health solutions. It also provides examples and resources to help rural communities assess their readiness, mobilize assets, and build the infrastructure needed to support long-term equity-focused initiatives. |
| Strong | Local Place-Based Partnerships as a Pathway to Health Equity | This report explores how community-based organizations across the U.S. are leveraging place-based, multi-sector partnerships to advance health equity. Rooted in housing, community development, and economic justice, these partnerships address the social determinants of health—such as neighborhood conditions and systemic inequities—to improve outcomes for children and families. The report highlights how strong backbone organizations, cross-sector collaboration, and community leadership are essential to building local capacity and aligning physical and human capital investments in historically underserved communities. |
| Strong | Community Toolbox: Improving Organizational Management and Development | This toolkit, part of a larger Community Tool Box from the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas, offers a step-by-step guide to help organizations and coalitions plan and manage effective collaborations. It walks users through identifying shared concerns, engaging stakeholders, and forming exploratory task forces. It also provides guidance on creating a governing structure, managing collaborative tasks, and tracking goals and progress. Designed for community-based initiatives, the resource emphasizes inclusive planning, cross-sector engagement, and strategic development to strengthen organizational capacity and impact. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Methods for Supporting Diverse Patient Engagement in a Diverse World | This interactive guide from the Canadian Institute of Health Research allows you to explore guides for consideratio for engaging with d/Deaf, disabled, rural and remote, LGBTQ2S+, and immigrant, refugee, racialized, and ethnocultural communities.ns |
| Early | Community Engagement of African Americans in the Era of COVID-19: Considerations, Challenges, Implications, and Recommendations for Public Hea | African Americans, compared with all other racial/ethnic groups, are more likely to contract coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), be hospitalized for it, and die of the disease. Psychosocial, sociocultural, and environmental vulnerabilities, compounded by preexisting health conditions, exacerbate this health disparity. Interconnected historical, policy, clinical, and community factors explain and underpin community-based participatory research approaches to advance the art and science of community engagement among African Americans in the COVID-19 era. In this commentary, we detail the pandemic response strategies of the Morehouse School of Medicine Prevention Research Center. We discuss the implications of these complex factors and propose recommendations for addressing them that, adopted together, will result in community and data-informed mitigation strategies. These approaches will proactively prepare for the next pandemic and advance community leadership toward health equity. |
| Early | Partnering with Community- Based Organizations for More Broad- Based Public Engagement | This webinar discusses rural health equity efforts in the state of Colorado and contains real-life examples of equity work. While this resource is Colorado-centric, it is a helpful introduction to the concept of rural health equity and multi-partner collaboration necessary when addressing inequities in small, rural communities. Rural Resource |
| Established | Community Tool Box: Building Leadership | The Community Tool Box, from the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas, presents a comprehensive toolkit focused on building leadership within community-based initiatives. This guide supports individuals and groups in developing leadership skills essential for advancing community health and equity. It outlines nine core leadership tasks—such as envisioning goals, affirming values, motivating others, and achieving unity—and provides practical strategies for assessing and strengthening leadership capacity. The resource includes planning tools, reflective questions, and models like the Community Leadership Corps to help organizations cultivate inclusive, effective leadership that reflects and serves the broader community. Recommendations are provided to guide leadership development at both individual and group levels. |
| Established | Let's Talk: Community Engagement for Health Equity | This guide explores the critical role of community engagement in advancing health equity. This resource outlines foundational concepts and principles of community engagement, emphasizing its importance in addressing the social determinants of health. Drawing from public health practice and literature, the guide highlights how meaningful engagement with communities—especially those experiencing health inequities—can inform more equitable policies and programs. It includes practical strategies, reflective questions, and real-world examples to support public health practitioners in embedding equity-focused engagement into their work. |
| Established | Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR): A Strategy for Building Healthy Communities and Promoting Health through Policy Chang | Presented by PolicyLink and UC Berkeley, this guide combines lessons and best practices from around the country. Included are six case studies from California that share learned experiences, promising practices, sample resources, and tools to assist local leaders in planning their own CBPR inspired projects. |
| Established | A Guide to Supporting Engagement & Resiliency in Rural Communities | While this guide is catered towards Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning (MAP) process, concepts and strategies identified in this guide are relevant for rural communities. Provided are essential elements of successful engagement with rural communities, including trust and partnerships. Rural Resource |
| Strong | Build Healthy Places Network: Guide to Racial Healing | The Build Healthy Places Network offers a guide that centers on racial healing as a foundational practice for advancing health equity and community well-being. This resource explores how cross-sector partnerships—particularly those between community development and public health—can incorporate racial healing into their work to address structural racism. Drawing from real-world examples and practitioner insights, the guide outlines key principles, practices, and tools to support organizations in fostering trust, repairing harm, and building authentic relationships with communities. It includes actionable recommendations to help institutions move from intention to impact in their racial equity journeys. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | The Guide to Cross-Sector Collaboration | This guide provides actionable steps on how to find, build and develop cross-sector partnerships. |
| Early | 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.). |
| Early | 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. |
| Early | 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. |
| Established | Developing Effective Coalitions: An Eight Step Guide | This guide provides actionable steps for building effective partnerships. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Mission Statement Development Guide | The Office of Health Equity TA Team presents a list of compiled resources for developing mission and vision statements. The guide also contains real-world examples of equity mission statements. |
| Early | A Rising Tide: Increasing Rural LHDs Capacity to Address the Social Determinants of Health | The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) presents a guide focused on the unique challenges and experiences of local health departments integrating equity into their organization. The guide shares results of an assessment completed with five rural health departments, which discusses foundational equity work in each department and digs deeply into motifs across the interviews. Recommendations are included to assist rural health departments address social determinants of health in their organizations. (Rural Resource) |
| Early | Building a Movement, Transforming Institutions | Developed by PolicyLink, this guide defines health equity and gives actionable steps for how to further incorporate equity into your organization. The guide is broken down into sections covering topics such as “Building Leadership for Health Equity,” “Leveraging Institutional Capital for Health Equity Sustainability,” and “Framing and Communication for Health Equity.” The guide has recommended resources for further reading, which includes examples from California health departments and other public health institutions. |
| Early | Choosing Health Equity:Understanding Decision Points in Policy and Practice | This is a useful discussion guide for public health advocates and decision-makers. A framework within the guide details four steps to implement equity and has discussion questions for each step. In addition to the questions, the guide explains the purpose of asking the questions and examples for further reading into the concepts behind questions. Organizations can benefit from expressing the purpose behind their equity work and verbalizing it to both internal and external partners. |
| Early | Advancing Health Equity: Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts | From the American Medical Association (AMA): "In Part 1, we offer a guidance on language for promoting health equity, contrasting traditional/outdated terms with equity-focused alternatives. In Part 2, we explore how narratives (the power behind words) matter. Lastly, in Part 3, we provide a glossary of key terms, defining key concepts, and whenever possible acknowledging debates over definitions and usage. We hope that this guide will stimulate critical thinking about language, narrative and concepts—helping readers to identify harmful phrasing in their own work and providing alternatives that move us toward racial justice and health equity." |
| Established | Implicit Bias Toolkit | The toolkit from the Pennsylvania Department of Health Office of Health Equity provides resources to learn about implicit bias and identify potential areas of change for individuals and organizations. While the intended audience is healthcare providers, the tools can be useful to all who work in health. |
| Established | ASTHO: Establishing an Office of Health Equity or Minority Health | In collaboration with 9 public health departments, includign California, this report compiles best practices and important considerations for setting up and sustaining a health equity/minority health office, especially in a resource-challenged environment. |
| Strong | Using a Health Equity Lens | The CDC guides readers on how to consider and use an equity lens in inclusive communication and decision-making. The guide discusses the overall concept of an equity lens and lists step-by-step recommendations on how to integrate equity into already established programs and policies. |
| Strong | Protocol for Culturally Responsive Organizations | The Coalition of Communities of Color shares their protocol for focusing on racial equity in your organization. This guide explains the impact of racial inequity both on an individual and on whole populations, change theory that can support shifts to racial justice initiatives, and concrete best practices that prioritize racial equity in the organization. Additionally, the guide includes a scoring matrix to measure the cultural responsiveness of your organization, recruitment policies and strategies, performance reviews, and many other helpful resources. |
| Strong | Building an Equitable Workplace at Local Health Departments Toolkit | The purpose of this toolkit is to support the ability of LHDs to to consider how policy, practice, and culture are advancing equity and inclusion within their department and among their staff, and to take action toward positive change. Possible actions include professional development and training, creating an action plan to support workplace equity, and applying an equity lens to workplace policies. |
| Strong | How to Evaluate an Organization's Commitment to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion | Developed by the University of California, Merced, this guide lists what potential employees want in a diverse organization. While not public health specific, organizations can use this guide to create a more inclusive work environment while also aligning to new standards of outward facing commitment to diversity. |
| Strong | Organizing for Racial Equity Within the Federal Government | Multiple racial justice organizations, such as Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) and Race Forward, share insights on organizing government agencies for racial justice. While focused on tips for federal agencies, many of the principles within this document are relevant to smaller agencies. One section to review is "Prepare for and learn from internal and external backlash," which can be an inevitable reaction that will occur when visually supporting antiracist policies. |
| Strong | Advancing Health Equity in Health Department’s Public Health Practice | Written by the Public Health Accreditation Board, this guide discusses different health equity initiatives in public health departments (including many across California), various resources and assistance available to departments wanting to further integrate equity, and overall recommendations for equity from the perspective of an accreditation body. Case studies, specific action items, and a large resource toolkit are all great real-world items that can be used to understand equity. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | 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. |
| Early | 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. |
| Early | 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. |
| Established | 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. |
| Established | 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. |
| Established | 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. |
| Established | 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. |
| Strong | 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. |
| Strong | 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. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Health Equity Performance Measures Toolkit: A Guide for Local Health Departments | The Center for Public Health Systems (CPHS) at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) developed this toolkit for all Local Health Departments (LHDs) who are interested in learning more about performance measures and how they can support LHD health equity initiatives. This toolkit is especially appropriate for public health professionals at LHDs who are curious about health equity performance measures (HEPM) but have not yet taken steps to design HEPM, or who are in the beginning steps of designing performance measures to assess progress and support improvement in health equity programs and initiatives at their LHD. |
| Early | Equity Impact Review Process Overview | The Equity Impact Review (EIR) process merges empirical (quantitative) data and community engagement findings (qualitative) to inform planning, decision-making and implementation of actions which affect equity in King County, Washington. This ensures that equity impacts are rigorously and holistically considered and advanced in the design and implementation of the proposed action (plan/policy/program development, operations modification, capital programs/projects, etc.) |
| Established | Building Health Equity Policy Agendas: A Guide for Wisconsin | This guide, developed through the Wisconsin Healthiest State Initiative, may help public health practitioners, coalitions, and stakeholders to: better understand what is meant by health equity and Health in All Policies, inform policy making for healthy and equitable outcomes, identify possible entry points for equity policy development, and inform a specific equity policy effort. |
| Established | Foundational Public Health Services Planning Guide | The purpose of this guide is to provide interested health departments with the key components to consider before planning the FPHS implementation process. I |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Making Wise Decisions: Find the right-fit data system to meet your organization's needs | Created by Public Profit and B3 Consults with generous support from the S.H. Cowell Foundation, Making Wise Decisions is a free step-by-step guide that aims to eliminate a very common and major struggle for mission-driven organizations: finding the right data system, or optimizing the one that’s in place. |
| Early | COVID-19 Health Equity Playbook for Communities, Strategies and Practices for an Equitable Reopening and Recovery | (Page 53) The Data Section of this report provides examples of dashboards from local health departments and lists state data tools to further explore. |
| Early | Gathering Data and Information from the City of Long Beach Office of Equity Toolkit | (Page 14-15) This toolkit provides guiding questions and examples of how to apply an equity lens to multiple strategies, including gathering data and information (of interest for this competency). The guiding questions span different levels in the spectrum of early, established, and strong. |
| Established | Principles for Using Public Health Data to Drive Equity | A guide to embedding equitable practices throughout the data life cycle. |
| Established | How Can We Mobilize Data? | This website provides ideas, actions, and resources on how to utilize data to understand and investigate inequities and evaluate public health interventions. The various materials span the spectrum of our early, established, and strong categories. |
| Strong | Best Practices Guidance for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Data Collection | The routine collection, analysis, and sharing of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH is essential to the health and well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and other identities (LGBTQIA+) community. More specifically, this data helps identify disparities, inform public health strategies, and support health equity efforts across the state. The collection of SOGI data begins at the community level and is used by Local Health Jurisdictions (LHJs) and other public health partners to support regional efforts. This guidance document is provided as Best Practices Guide for California Department of Public Health (CDPH) programs. The foundation of the CDPH SOGI Guidance is based on best practices recommended by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute; and UCLA Williams Institute. |
| Strong | Applying social determinants of health indicator data for advancing health equity | This technical guide walks local health departments and their community partners through collecting, analyzing, and using data indicators for local community health assessments, program/policy development, and health equity advocacy. |
| Strong | Do No Harm - Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization | This guide with its respective checklists and toolkits focuses on the ways data analysts, researchers, and communicators fail to integrate equity in their work, how to correct common mistakes, and how to be more intentional in using a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) approach. |
| Strong | Sharing Data With Your Community | A tipsheet that outlines steps for sharing data with your community. |
| Strong | Principles for Using Public Health Data to Drive Equity | (Page 23) This guide aims to incorporate data equity principles to each stage of the data life cycle, bringing an equity lens to each stage. These principles emerge from an environmental scan by the CDC Foundation that is further described in the document. The various stages of the data life cycle relate to different levels of the early, established, and strong spectrum. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Community and Stakeholder Engagement | (Page 65-70) In this section of the COVID-19 Health Equity Playbook, CDPH provides actionable steps towards more empowering community engagement. The section gives the basic principles of engagement, real life examples of activities to solidify agreements and trust, and additional resources to explore the concept more. |
| Established | Evaluating Community Programs and Initiatives | (Chapters 36, 38-39). Part of the Community Tool Box from the University of Kansas, this section focuses on how organizations can use Community Participatory Research to evaluate and make decisions on community facing programs and policies. The section includes a toolkit specifically focused on how to evaluate a community initiative with a detailed and easy-to-follow step-by-step guide. |
| Established | Health Equity Data Analysis | The Minnesota Department of Public Health shares their Health Equity Data Analysis (HEDA) guide to assist public health workers in separating their data into different vulnerable populations. This allows organizations to look at health outcomes among different populations in their community and plan equity activities based on data. The guide explains how to do a HEDA step-by-step, as well as how to both share and use the findings. |
| Established | Dabbling in the Data: A Hands-On Guide to Participatory Data Analysis | This tool provides step-by-step guidance on 15 different approaches, organized into five sections: distribution, change over time, contribution, categories, and communicating findings. |
| Strong | Principles for Using Public Health Data to Drive Equity - A guide to embedding equitable practices throughout the data life cycle | (Page 23) The CDC Foundation uses this guide to help different organizations utilize equity principles throughout all uses of health data. The guide shares the five data equity principles, with advice on how to apply them to data work, and actionable steps to take to integrate equity at each step in the data analysis process. |
| Strong | Powering Health Equity Action with Online Data Tools: 10 Design Principles | This report offers 10 design principles for effective online data tools developed to advance health equity. This report explains how to apply these principles and include a local, state, or national real-world example of how the principle has been applied and executed. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Involving People Most Affected by the Problem (University of Kansas Community Toolbox) | This guide describes why inclusive decision- making is fundamental to advancing health equity. It also details how to pick partners, problem solve barriers to participation, and gives further resources to explore this topic. |
| Early | Power Moves: Your Essential Philanthropy Assessment Guide for Equity and Justice | This guide provides an overview of the three dimensions of power: building power, sharing power and wielding power. It contains an organizational self- assessment, sample questionnaires, a discussion guide, best practices guidelines and other tools to help organizations determine their readiness to wield power specifically within their internal operations and grantmaking processes. |
| Early | Creative Ways to Solicit Feedback | A guide version of the webinar "Creative Ways to Solicit Stakeholder Feedback" that provides various methods of activities and general tips. |
| Established | Resources for Collaboration and Power Sharing Between Government Agencies and Community Power-Building Organizations | This guide is for health departments seeking to share power with community power-building organizations (CPBOs) and provides action-oriented steps to improve collaboration. |
| Established | Ensuring Equity in COVID-19 Planning, Response, and Recovery Decision Making | This resource helps health departments ensure that equity is at the center of the decision-making process before, during and after a public health emergency. It provides examples of California health departments, (e.g., Santa Clara County, City of Long Beach etc.), embedding equity into their COVID-19 response. |
| Established | Making Equity Endemic in Solano County | Using the Solano County Public Health Department as an example, this report includes recommendations on ways to support BIPOC communities during the post pandemic recovery. |
| Strong | Activities to Deepen Your Power-Building Analysis | This guide assists public health professionals who wish to dive deeper into power dynamics and assess their own power-building activities. The guide contains activities that individuals and their whole organizations can complete in order to find their own abilities, create a partner landscape analysis, and complete a basic power mapping activity. |
| Strong | Health Departments and Authentic Community Engagement by Center for Public Health Practice & Research | This study of LHJ staff across the United States describes in detail their community engagement activities and provides recommendations for authentic community engagement. |
| Strong | Ripple Effect Mapping | Ripple Effect Mapping (REM) is a participatory focus group strategy meant to surface both anticipated and unanticipated outcomes, which can help to refocus complex initiatives. |
| Development Level | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Established | Principles & Strategies to Developing an Equitable Community Health Worker Workforce Study | Principles and strategies in this document draw on the approaches and lessons learned from internet research to collect key U.S. national and state level workforce studies and meta-analyses as well as discussions with Community Health Worker (CHW), CHR and ally researchers. It is designed for health departments, legislators, funders, health systems, CHW Networks and Associations, community-based organizations, advocates, and others involved in advancing the sustainability of the CHW profession through workforce studies. |
