Resources

This page provides links to a variety of web resources, including maps and data, toolkits, guides, examples of promising practices, and more. Many of these resources are developed and maintained by other organizations, and the Georgia Health Policy Center does not have any control over changes made to the resources or opinions expressed on external websites.

The Georgia Statewide Health Equity Community of Practice has determined that these topics are foundational to successful collaboration to create healthy communities for all. Please use this table of contents to jump to the types of resources you wish to explore:

Identifying Inequities in Your Area

The annual data release provides a revealing snapshot of how health is influenced by where we live, learn, work, and play. The snapshots provide communities a starting point to investigate where to make change. https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/health-data

This web application provides interactive maps for model-based estimates of 36 chronic disease related measures at county, place, census tract, and ZCTA levels. PLACES is an expansion of the 500 Cities project. It is a collaboration between CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/22c7182a162d45788dd52a2362f8ed65

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Social Vulnerability Index (hereafter, CDC/ATSDR SVI or SVI) is a place-based index, database, and mapping application designed to identify and quantify communities experiencing social vulnerability. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/placeandhealth/svi/interactive_map.html

Trusted Well-Being Data on Children and Young People in the United States. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT® (LA INFANCIA CUENTA™) is a premier source of data on children, youth and families. Find indicators for the nation, states and more. https://datacenter.aecf.org/

Regional and statewide data for Georgia and the Atlanta region. https://neighborhoodnexus.org/

Bridge the gap between data and action. Their mapping application, analytics platform, and data licensing services are built for non-GIS professionals, data-literate researchers, and everyone in between. https://www.policymap.com/

The National Equity Atlas is America’s most detailed report card on racial and economic equity. We equip movement leaders and policymakers with actionable data and strategies to advance racial equity and shared prosperity. The Atlas is produced by PolicyLink and the USC Equity Research Institute.  https://nationalequityatlas.org/

The original Well-Being In the Nation Measures were developed by over 100 organizations and communities working together across sectors to identify and try out measures that mattered to them as part of the 100 Million Healthier Lives initiative. The process of developing and updating these measures is stewarded by Well-being and Equity (WE) in the World and is done in collaboration with Healthy People 2030, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and others with input from hundreds of communities. https://www.winmeasures.org/

EJScreen  EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool. Identify environmental health risk factors. https://ejscreen.epa.gov/mapper/

Identify environmental health risk factors. https://ejscreen.epa.gov/mapper/

Data 101: Finding and Using Information

Mobilize data, research, and evaluation to make the case for, assess, and inform interventions for health equity.  https://healthequityguide.org/strategic-practices/mobilize-data-research-evaluation/

Welcome to the Racial Equity Data Lab, a space where you can create data visuals and dashboards to support your campaigns for racial equity and inclusive recovery. https://nationalequityatlas.org/lab

These resources and tools provide helpful guidance around using and interpreting data and maps for community change work. This is a great place to start for community data skill-building—you’ll find descriptions of foundational concepts, tips and tricks, and emerging and innovative tools and resources for using data to drive and inform your work.  https://www.communitycommons.org/collections/Maps-and-Data

Getting to Results connects a racial equity lens to the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) methodology to help empower jurisdictions to make good decisions and advance racial equity. The RBA framework shows a relationship between whole population level results and community indicators of those desired results to the actions that groups determine will be most effective at producing change in communities. https://garemembers.racialequityalliance.org/viewdocument/racial-equity-getting-to-results-2

Introduction to Community Resources

Millions of people use the Community Tool Box each year to get help taking action, teaching, and training others in organizing for community development. Dive in to find help assessing community needs and resources, addressing social determinants of health, engaging stakeholders, action planning, building leadership, improving cultural competency, planning an evaluation, and sustaining your efforts over time. https://ctb.ku.edu/en

The Asset-Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) is at the center of a large and growing movement that considers local assets as the primary building blocks of sustainable community development. Building on the skills of local residents, the power of local associations, and the supportive functions of local institutions, asset-based community development draws upon existing community strengths to build stronger, more sustainable communities for the future. https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/Pages/default.aspx for the institute and https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/resources/Documents/WhatisAssetBasedCommunityDevelopment.pdf for the toolkit

Introduction to Barriers to Health

The Roots of Health Inequity. Explore the underlying causes of social injustice and health inequity to unearth public health’s role in building healthier communities. https://www.rootsofhealthinequity.org/

Introduction to Vital Conditions

The Seven Vital Conditions for Well-Being is a useful framework for conceptualizing holistic well-being and the Conditions that give rise to it, as well as identifying levers for community change and improvement. https://www.communitycommons.org/collections/Seven-Vital-Conditions-for-Health-and-Well-Being

Tool for Health & Resilience In Vulnerable Environments. THRIVE enables communities to determine how to improve health and safety, and promote health equity. It is a framework for understanding how structural drivers, such as racism, play out at the community level in terms of the social-cultural, physical/built, and economic/ educational environments. As a framework, THRIVE is widely applicable to local, state, and national initiatives to inform policy and program direction. As a tool, THRIVE can be used in a variety of planning and implementation processes, from neighborhood-level planning to community health needs assessments (CHNA) and community health improvement planning (CHIP) processes. https://www.preventioninstitute.org/tools/thrive-tool-health-resilience-vulnerable-environments

Targeted universalism means setting universal goals pursued by targeted processes to achieve those goals. Within a targeted universalism framework, universal goals are established for all groups concerned. The strategies developed to achieve those goals are targeted, based upon how different groups are situated within structures, culture, and across geographies to obtain the universal goal. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/targeted-universalism and https://www.communitycommons.org/collections/Achieving-Equitable-Outcomes-for-All

Vital Conditions and Social Determinants of Health

To better support partners and decision-makers in these efforts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the Health Impact in Five Years (HI-5) Initiative. The HI-5 Initiative shifts the focus beyond traditional clinical approaches to health and explores social and environmental approaches that improve population health and health equity.  https://www.cdcfoundation.org/hi-5-initiative

The Urban Institute is exploring promising solutions to advance equity and upward mobility in the decades ahead. We are also identifying what today’s transformational leaders need to know to drive forward groundbreaking ideas. In 2019, we will start sharing what we learn about the country’s big challenges, answering what would it take.  https://next50.urban.org/

The Change Library is a practical, searchable, peer-reviewed implementation library that helps change makers by sharing both the things that work and the things that don’t work to improve health, wellbeing, and equity with people and communities. https://www.communitycommons.org/collections/100-Million-Healthier-Lives-Change-Library-on-Community-Commons

This guide is intended to help the Delaware Division of Public Health and its partners with addressing underlying causes of health inequities by supporting the implementation of their health equity strategy. https://www.dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/dph/mh/files/healthequityguideforpublichealthpractitionersandpartners.pdf

Vital Conditions in Action

The CDC Foundation published its Public Transportation Action Guide for public health care professionals. This guide includes information about why public health should join forces with public transportation and how public health practitioners can bolster public transportation systems.

Healthy Environments for All: Good for Families, Communities, and the Economy. This issue brief describes the economic benefits of creating healthy environments for all—both through targeted strategies that improve the quality of neighborhood environments where low-income people of color live and work, and through larger-scale shifts toward a clean energy economy that does not rely on fossil fuels. https://allincities.org/find-resources/library/casey-equal-voice-series-healthy-environment

The CDC Foundation published its Earned Income Tax Credit Action Guide for public health care professionals. This guide includes information on EITCs, how EITCs keep more families and children above the poverty line and their link with positive health outcomes, especially among mothers and children.

Transformational vs. Transactional

To advance health equity, local health departments must systematically address power imbalances, racism, and other forms of oppression. To do so, they must transform how they work internally, with communities, and alongside other government agencies. https://healthequityguide.org/strategic-practices/

For those who are just embarking on this challenging and rewarding work, the practices and principles of BUILD can serve as a model for change, and the experience of BUILD communities as a resource for best practices. https://buildhealthchallenge.org/resources/workbook/

In recent years we have seen a surge in initiatives designed to improve health and safety through changes to community environments, with new investments in bike lanes, parks, urban trails, public transit, grocery stores, and more. Over time such investments, combined with shifting job and housing markets, can attract more development interest and increase the likelihood that low and middle income people and people of color get squeezed out of neighborhood housing and business markets rather than benefiting from new development and investments. http://www.buildhealthyplaces.org/content/uploads/2018/04/Healthy-Development-without-Displacement-realizing-the-vision-of-healthy-communities-for-all.pdf

Emerging and longstanding solutions focused on what each neighborhood needs, crafted in collaboration with the communities that would benefit from those solutions, bring hope and new possibilities for addressing the intergenerational poverty caused by this history of structural and systemic racism. https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/publication/communicating-about-intergenerational-urban-poverty-and-race-in-america-challenges-opportunities-and-emerging-recommendations/

Racial Equity Toolkit: An Opportunity to Operationalize Equity https://www.racialequityalliance.org/viewdocument/racial-equity-toolkit-an-opportuni-2

Leveraging Healthy People 2030 to Build Non-Traditional Multisector Partnerships.  The goal of this toolkit is to help state and territorial health agencies (S/THAs) build non-traditional, non-public health sector partnerships to improve health outcomes and advance health equity. The Healthy People 2030 objectives, aligned closely with the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) framework and Health in All Policies (HiAP) lens, can serve as the cornerstone of these collaborations. This toolkit is implementation-focused, providing partnership-building and -sustaining skills that are rooted in Healthy People 2030 tools and success stories and can be operationalized for community needs. https://www.astho.org/topic/toolkit/building-non-traditional-public-health-multisector-partnerships/

Scarcity Mindset

How to Move from Deficit-Based to Strength-Based Language. A key issue that is holding us back from really tackling and ending hunger is the focus on not having enough. Within charitable food work, and in other nonprofit sectors too, we describe this concept as the scarcity mentality. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/moving-beyond-the-scarcity-mindset/

‘The Sum of Us’ Tallies the Cost of Racism for Everyone https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/books/review-sum-of-us-heather-mcghee.html

Community Health Workers in Upstream Health Equity Work

Engaging Community Health Workers to Achieve Health Equity in North Carolina was a capacity-building training hosted by NC CEAL and CCPH. The training provided an up to date overview of community health workers (CHWs) in North Carolina. By participating in the training, participants were able to gain better insights about CHWs’ lived experiences to inform their health equity work, creating new connections between community members and CHWs and identifying best practices on how to engage CHWs in their communities. https://ccphealth.org/nc-ceal-engaging-community-health-workers-to-achieve-health-equity-in-north-carolina/

Rural vs. Urban Health Disparities in Georgia

This toolkit by the Rural Health Information Hub organizes evidence-based models and resources to support the implementation of programs that address the social determinants of health (SDOH) in rural communities across the United States. https://www.buildhealthyplaces.org/tools-resources/community-resource-library/resource/social-determinants-of-health-in-rural-communities-toolkit/

This report synthesizes recent studies on the complexities of how blight affects the health of individuals and neighborhoods while offering a blend of policy and program recommendations to help guide communities in taking a more holistic and coordinated approach, such as expanding the use of health impact assessments, tracking health outcomes, and infusing public health into housing policies, codes and practices. http://www.urban.org/research/publication/urban-blight-and-public-health

Rural communities may be able to secure continued funding for health equity efforts if they can demonstrate the economic impact of reducing inequities. https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/toolkits/health-equity/6/making-the-case

Strategic Partnerships

Effectively addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) and promoting health equity in communities requires an intentional focus on cross-sector partnership among public health, health care, and community-based organizations (CBOs). This page describes structures that cross-sector partnerships can put in place to set themselves up for success. https://virtualcommunities.naccho.org/gettingfurtherfaster/blogs/eileen-kazura/2024/06/04/unlock-the-potential-of-cross-sector-sdoh-partners

The goal of this toolkit is to help state and territorial health agencies (S/THAs) build non-traditional, non-public health sector partnerships to improve health outcomes and advance health equity. The Healthy People 2030 objectives, aligned closely with the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) framework and Health in All Policies (HiAP) lens, can serve as the cornerstone of these collaborations. This toolkit is implementation-focused, providing partnership-building and -sustaining skills that are rooted in Healthy People 2030 tools and success stories and can be operationalized for community needs. https://www.astho.org/topic/toolkit/building-non-traditional-public-health-multisector-partnerships/

This toolkit provides guidance for creating a partnership among different organizations to address a common goal. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/creating-and-maintaining-coalitions-and-partnerships

Research suggests that multi-sector partnerships for health equity can improve local health system capacity and health outcomes. What can be learned from the experiences of community-based organizations that have leveraged partnerships to create healthy and equitable communities? https://jchs.harvard.edu/research-areas/working-papers/local-place-based-partnerships-pathway-health-equity

With support from the Kaiser Permanente National Community Benefit Fund and in partnership with Human Impact Partners, the CDC Foundation developed a set of recommendations and roadmap for building and strengthening partnerships between public health agencies and community-based organizations (CBOs). This resource offers tactical and strategic recommendations stemming from conversations with more than 100 health departments and CBOs. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/programs/strengthening-interface-between-public-health-and-community-based-organizations

Aligning Systems and Sectors

The Assessment for Advancing Community Transformation (AACT) tool allows communities to directly collect and use data about their collaborative efforts transform communities. By assessing six key themes and 22 subitems, the tool provides data to community collaboratives in order to reflect, prioritize, and align actions based on their shared understanding where they are now and where they want to go. https://ghpc.gsu.edu/tools-frameworks/aact/

Based on their learning from years of their own grant making and the research of others, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation worked with the Georgia Health Policy Center to develop Framework for Aligning Sectors to help users envision how aligning across sectors can extend beyond one-time, grant-funded efforts. The framework emphasizes coordination that is built to last, values the unique contributions of each sector, and the importance of sharing power and voice with community members.

Messaging – Talking about Health Equity

Vision, Values, and Voice: A Communications Toolkit provides guidance for developing values-based messages that engage core audiences, disrupt dominant narratives, and help shape the public dialogue. In addition to big picture thinking about communications strategy, you will also find tips and examples of a range of tactics, and concrete messaging guidance in the form of “opportunity flashcards” which provide short and easy-to-find advice and sample language on a range of social justice issues. This resource is for those working to influence public thinking about social justice issues over the long-term while also crafting effective short-term campaigns. https://opportunityagenda.org/our-tools/communications-toolkit/

This step-by-step toolkit  will help you get started in thinking about narrative, articulating your narrative strategy, and designing and implementing your narrative projects. Designed for for storytellers, dream weavers, community builders, and those looking to uplift pro social justice narratives, the tools within this toolkit will allow you to analyze the narrative terrain, sharpen your narratives, identify and reach your audience. While based on the immigration movement, these tools can be applied to many more topics or issues. https://www.raceforward.org/resources/toolkits/butterfly-lab-narrative-design-toolkit

FrameWorks collaborates with storytellers, organizations, and coalitions to shift mindsets, change systems, and create a more just world. Visit their website for “framing fundamentals” and a collection of framing resources on specific topics, including housing, health, substance use, the environment, social services, and more. https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/

This handbook is the culmination of a set of trainings, technical support andcoaching for a talented array of communications professionals across the progressive landscape. It provides 8 principles for talking about issues that impact the vital conditions for health and wellbeing, and provides topical examples. https://www.communitychange.org/wp-content/uploads/C3-Messaging-This-Moment-Handbook.pdf

The Social Justice Phrase Guide is your go-to tool to craft inclusive messages. Whether developing language for your organization, communicating through media platforms, or engaging in personal discussions, follow these guidelines to successfully communicate across communities. https://opportunityagenda.org/messaging_reports/social-justice-phrase-guide/