ChangeLab Solutions  

For far too long, discriminatory laws and policies have prevented people from living healthy lives.

Everyone deserves good jobs and schools, healthy food, safe neighborhoods, quality health care, and affordable housing. But some folks are excluded from accessing these basic needs because of unfair policies that create barriers to health in underserved communities. Changing existing laws and policies is the most effective method for undoing the harms of discriminatory policies and advancing health equity across America.

ChangeLab Solutions is proud to announce A Blueprint for Changemakers: Achieving Health Equity Through Law & Policy. This new resource presents legal strategies and best practices to help policymakers, practitioners, and communities improve health outcomes.

The Blueprint outlines ways to leverage the unique power and efficacy of local policy solutions, incorporate health in all policies, and engage diverse community members in the policy process. At its core, the Blueprint focuses on comprehensive strategies to address the fundamental drivers of health inequities.

Download the Blueprint here. 

Click here to check out our new collection of short videos for public health practitioners.

Each video, 7-9 minutes long, introduces a core concept that all public health practitioners need to know in order to advance health equity.

This useful collection of videos, along with a full slate of free, on-demand trainings, is presented by the Public Health Law Academy, with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These short introductions to core concepts of public health law can be used by individuals who are interested in increasing their legal literacy. The videos can also be used by public health trainers and educators separately as informational pieces in a larger presentation or together as an overview of content that is covered more comprehensively in the full-length trainings.

The collection includes five videos:

• What is the scope of public health authority?
• What types of laws can governmental agencies enact and enforce?
• What is preemption? How does it affect public health? 
• What are the basic structure and functions of government?
• What is legal epidemiology?

Public Health Law Academy trainings are designed for practitioners such as health department staff, nurses, and public health lawyers, as well as public health faculty and students. The trainings focus on core competencies that all public health practitioners need, no matter their role, even if they are not directly involved in law and policy decisions affecting health outcomes.

How can cross-sector partnerships foster a just food system and support healthy communities?

What do health care systems, local governments, and community organizations need to consider when partnering to increase healthy food access for those who need it most?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity rates in the United States have risen to unprecedented levels, affecting not only individual health but health equity in our communities. To address health disparities, ChangeLab Solutions has developed a guide that supports on-the-ground staff in community organizations, health systems, and local governments in forming partnerships to promote equitable access to healthy food. Offering law and policy considerations alongside real-world case examples, this guide shows how partners can build more resilient and just food systems for the long term.

Legal & Policy Strategies for Health Care & Food System Partners presents a helpful framework for food system collaborations plus legal and policy considerations for three types of food system interventions:

• Addressing food insecurity for individuals through connections to nutrition assistance programs;
• Establishing a new business model in which institutions embrace healthier food purchasing choices; and
• Creating strategies to invest in local food production and retailers.

Click here to access the guide.

Planning affects all aspects of our lives; it shapes our opportunities and guides how communities prioritize competing interests. But planning does not treat all people equitably.

Planning practices have played a central role in creating and perpetuating discrimination that has contributed to a growing divide in health equity, often along racial and economic lines. Although past planning practices have helped create inequities, planners today have the power to help solve them, promoting a just society in which every person can thrive and reach their full potential.

To become part of the solution, planners need a new set of practices and tools to equitably engage communities in developing plans that disrupt patterns of structural disadvantage. The Planner’s Playbook: A Community-Centered Approach to Improving Health & Equity offers guidance, providing resources, concrete steps, and examples for planners who wish to center equity in their planning practice so that their communities promote opportunity and prosperity for all.

The playbook guides the planning process by

• Discussing how to avoid pitfalls in the conventional planning process that may create or perpetuate disparities;
• Explaining ways that local agencies can build their capacity to engage community members who have often been left out of planning processes;
• Outlining strategies for planners and decisionmakers to integrate equity into all phases of planning; and
• Presenting real-world examples of how communities have incorporated these strategies and actions.

Our playbook is intended for planners, decisionmakers, and other practitioners who develop or influence their local government’s plans and policies and thus shape the pattern, design, and function of their communities.

Click here to access the Playbook.

Equity-informed enforcement of public health policies can help break the cycles of injustice and inequitable health outcomes experienced by underserved communities.

Public health policies have catalyzed major health improvements for people living in the United States. But without enforcement — that is, a means of incentivizing compliance — these policies are less likely to produce their intended effects. Equitable enforcement is a process of ensuring compliance with law and policy that considers and minimizes harms to people affected by health inequities.

Enforcement actions taken in the name of public health can sometimes harm, discriminate against, or otherwise undermine the health of the very people whom the laws are meant to protect. In fact, enforcement that is carried out inequitably can create, maintain, or exacerbate health inequities. Equitable enforcement, by contrast, can hold wrongdoers accountable while protecting the health and well-being of individuals and the wider community.

By posing a series of questions to consider when drafting, implementing, and enforcing a policy, ChangeLab Solutions' resource helps policymakers, advocates, and enforcement officials explore (1) the equity implications of traditional public health enforcement tools, and (2) strategies to avoid unintended negative consequences when enforcing violations of the law. Equitable Enforcement to Achieve Health Equity also discusses best practices in design and development of enforcement provisions to help avoid inequitable impacts and promote community health.

Click here to read the full guide.