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Promising Practices that show evidence of effectiveness in improving public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting, as indicated by achievement of aims consistent with the objectives of the activities, and are suitable for adaptation by other communities.
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Case Study
The case study outlines how the city of King County created an interbranch team to focus on developing tools and policies to focus on equity across all government departments. The team has focused on providing trainings and assistance, helping with equity strategic planning and implementation, and training teams within each agency/department to focus on equity.
Promising Practices that show evidence of effectiveness in improving public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting, as indicated by achievement of aims consistent with the objectives of the activities, and are suitable for adaptation by other communities.
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Peer Review Study
This article reviews systemic factors affecting low income immigrant communities during COVID-19 and provides recommendations strategies to improve public health infrastructure using the Public Health 3.0 concept. This high-risk community represented a large portion of essential workers, who even before the pandemic faced less access to health care and were structurally marginalized. The authors discuss equity strategies including prioritizing COVID-19 public relief funds and allocating testing and vaccines to these communities. The paper also reviews how to improve public health infrastructure to mitigate disparities immigrant communities face by addressing social determinants of health, communicating about and structuring policies and programs that do not require identification, engaging cross-sector stakeholders, and developing tools to collect relevant, appropriate data.
Emerging Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and produce early results that are consistent with the objectives of the activities and thus indicate effectiveness.
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Peer Review Study
This study provides short, intermediate, and long term research and policy recommendations by behavioral scientists on how to mitigate COVID-19 through behavior change to slow its spread by enhancing the understanding of impact of health inequities on underserved minority populations. Both the research and policy recommendations included in this commentary emphasize equity-driven (1) research practices, including applying a social determinants of health and health equity lens to monitoring, evaluation, and clinical trials activities on COVID-19; and (2) policy actions, such as dedicating resources to prioritize high-risk communities for testing, treatment, and prevention approaches and implementing organizational, institutional, and legislative policies that address the social and economic barriers to overall well-being that these populations face during a pandemic.
Promising Practices that show evidence of effectiveness in improving public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting, as indicated by achievement of aims consistent with the objectives of the activities, and are suitable for adaptation by other communities.
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Summary Report/Recommendations
This report outlines the catalyzing conditions for sustaining healthy communities, with the central premise being community power-building approaches. Public health partners can use this roadmap to build community power, which includes setting agendas, changing public discourse, building relationships with decision makers, and creating governance structures. The report also highlights sixteen community power-building efforts across the United States.
Novel Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and are in the process of generating evidence of effectiveness or may not yet be tested.
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Implementation Guide
This article describes how Delaware’s Department of Public Health tracks geographic areas with low vaccination uptake and compares this data with information on areas of high social vulnerability as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index. The department also works with federally qualified health centers, providers, and pharmacies to deliver services to historically marginalized populations in the state.
Best Practices that show evidence of effectiveness in improving public health outcomes when implemented in multiple real-life settings, as indicated by achievement of aims consistent with the objectives of the activities.
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Summary Report/Recommendations
This framework focuses on strategies and action steps recommended for health departments to enhance access to testing, quality care, and prevention methods in correctional/incarceration facilities. This resource opines that health departments, which often provide health care in carceral settings or contract private organizations to provide health care, should strengthen health care services for incarcerated people. All people, regardless of whether they are incarcerated, should have immediate access to testing, care, and the ability to protect themselves from disease.
Best Practices that show evidence of effectiveness in improving public health outcomes when implemented in multiple real-life settings, as indicated by achievement of aims consistent with the objectives of the activities.
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Case Study
This case study describes how the Virginia Equity Leadership Task Force (ELT) uses data to drive allocation of resources. ELT used a data-driven approach to learn where they should allocate resources to make a maximum impact, with a specific focus on marginalized and underserved populations who are at greatest risk of severe disease from COVID-19. They profiled neighborhoods by equity factors including income, race and ethnicity, comorbidities, crowded housing, and preferred language, and then distributed personal protective equipment with priority given to more vulnerable populations. They used similar analyses of social determinants of health; up-to-date COVID-19 vaccination status; and data on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to determine where to place vaccine centers and hold mass vaccination events.
Novel Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and are in the process of generating evidence of effectiveness or may not yet be tested.
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White Paper/Brief
This article details how the Rhode Island Department of Health built its community-level COVID-19 response from existing capacities and networks through its Health Equity Zone Initiative. The initiative is a place-based, community-level model that brings a range of community members together to address pressing health issues and build capacity for systemic changes surrounding the social determinants of health. The state has used federal pandemic relief funds to expand the Health Equity Zone Initiative by providing resources to community partners, social service agencies, and grassroots organizations to be engaged in the pandemic response. The initiative’s partners provided critical community-based services including COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites, quarantine and isolation supports, distribution of masks and other personal protective equipment, and direct outreach and education by community health workers and community outreach specialists.
Novel Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and are in the process of generating evidence of effectiveness or may not yet be tested.
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White Paper/Brief
This article describes how the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Health Equity Response Team, which is made up of more than 100 community partners, helps implement recommendations from the task force. The team meets every two weeks to address health inequities associated with COVID-19. Over the past 18 months the team has led initiatives to serve vulnerable populations. Initiatives such as faith-based vaccine sites, immigrant testing access, mobile community testing options, and agricultural worker testing bolstered the department’s response to COVID-19. The team facilitated community partnerships that drove personal protection equipment distribution, investigation of improved paid sick family/medical leave options, and the digital clemency process in the corrections field. The team also spawned the department’s efforts around improved race and ethnicity data enrichment, assessment, and reporting improvements.
Novel Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and are in the process of generating evidence of effectiveness or may not yet be tested.
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White Paper/Brief
This article describes how Virginia collected and reported data to inform COVID-19 response efforts and decisions. Virginia officials noted a hallmark of Virginia’s success has been the focus on data strategies and mapping techniques to identify COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and resource allocation priorities. For example, the working group used geospatial data to inform the distribution process for a personal protective equipment (PPE) pilot program that successfully distributed more than two million units of PPE across 66 local governments. The task force uses data stratified by race and ethnicity, medical vulnerability, and other social and environmental factors to identify locations for community engagement, outreach, testing, and vaccination clinics. The task force also launched two equity dashboards to provide a transparent measurement of ways COVID-19 resources have been allocated and equity gaps across various social determinants of health identified in Virginia House Joint Resolution 537.