Health Equity
Health equity is achieved when every person has the opportunity to “attain his or her full health potential” and no one is “disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances.”
-Center for Disease Control
Achieving Health Equity
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shares four key steps to achieve health equity:
1. Identify important health disparities. Many disparities in health are rooted in inequities in the opportunities and resources needed to be as healthy as possible. The determinants of health include living and working conditions, education, income, neighborhood characteristics, social inclusion, and medical care. An increase in opportunities to be healthier will benefit everyone but more focus should be placed on groups that have been excluded or marginalized in the past.
2. Change and implement policies, laws, systems, environments, and practices to reduce inequities in the opportunities and resources needed to be as healthy as possible. Eliminate the unfair individual and institutional social conditions that give rise to the inequities.
3. Evaluate and monitor efforts using short-and long-term measures as it may take decades or generations to reduce some health disparities. In order not to underestimate the size of the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged, disadvantaged groups should not be compared to the general population but to advantaged groups.
4. Reassess strategies in light of process and outcomes and plan next steps. Actively engage those most affected by disparities in the identification, design, implementation, and evaluation of promising solutions.
Assessing Your Community
Not all communities are the same, so it is important to assess your community to guide your tobacco prevention efforts. When conducting a community assessment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests starting with the following questions:
The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) is a rich data source for health equity issues. The dashboard helps disaggregate data based on certain groups. The questions above can then be used as a guide to identify and plan activities to address the unmet health disparity needs of students.
