The Office of Minority Health and Public Health Policy is pleased to announce that the Virginia Department of Health was awarded a Healthy People 2020 Evaluation Grant in the amount of $37,000. This project will position the Commonwealth of Virginia as a best practice site in using Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) goals and objectives to inform and guide statewide health and public policy decisions in order to promote public health, health care, and health equity. The grant will provide the means to improve the health in the Commonwealth of Virginia by building the public health knowledge base and improving the awareness of the HP2020 framework among key decision makers.
The Division of Health Equity's (DHE) primary goal is to permanently change the conditions that produce differential health outcomes that will, over time, have a greater effect than traditional interventions.
The Division of Health Equity works with stakeholders to identify approaches to eliminate health inequities through a focus on social determinants of health and social justice, in addition to more traditional health promotion, as key strategies to eliminate health inequities that exist by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, geography, gender, immigrant status and other social classifications.
Therefore, questions exploring health are reframed to allow for a greater understanding of root causes. For example:
Conventional:
How can we promote healthy behavior?
Health Equity:
How can we target dangerous conditions and reorganize land
use and transportation policies to ensure healthy spaces and places?
Conventional:
How can we reduce disparities in the distribution of disease and illness?
Health Equity:
How can we eliminate inequities in the distribution of resources and
power that shape health outcomes?
From the Unnatural Causes Toolkit: Background
Dr. Michael Royster explains health inequities and what you can do to eliminate them.
For more information about the Division of Health Equity, contact Division Director, Karen Reed.
Full Version