Learning from Practice: Implementing health equity frameworks to guide health equity action
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Health equity frameworks to guide public health action
Health equity frameworks are one tool that public health practitioners and partners can use to build shared understanding of core health equity concepts, generate momentum for health equity action and provide flexible guidance on joint actions required to advance health equity.
Practice examples: co-creating health equity frameworks
This resource features interviews with practitioners at the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and the Provincial System Support Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health who shared their experiences and expertise in co-creating health equity frameworks and laying the groundwork for their implementation. These two case examples illustrate many of the approaches that public health can apply when advancing health equity, whether using a framework or not.
Key approaches to advance health equity within public health organizations
Key approaches that emerged include the need for incremental, coordinated and strategic actions at all levels of an organization to create enabling environments so that meaningful and impactful health equity work can happen. Additionally, embedding levers for accountability within an organization can ensure there is collective accountability to move health equity forward. Interviewees talked about the need to build and sustain relationships with allies inside and outside an organization, particularly at senior leadership levels, and with networks of health equity champions.
Disrupting dominant biomedical world views, promoting a deeper understanding of the structural and social determinants of health that create inequities, and recognizing and addressing historical and ongoing harms perpetuated by colonial health systems can all help to advance impactful health equity work.
Interviewees also noted that there is never a perfect context or point in time to initiate equity work; instead, it is about finding the space and opportunity to do so and to start there.
Gap in the literature on how to implement health equity frameworks
A 2023 NCCDH rapid review conducted in collaboration with the British Columbia Ministry of Health found 47 frameworks that can guide health equity action in public health contexts. A key finding of this review, however, was that there is limited information in the literature on how to implement frameworks to advance health equity for all. This Learning from Practice resource aims to address this gap.
Use this resource to
- Identify areas of action when co-creating or laying the groundwork to implement a health equity framework in varied organizational contexts
- Strategize approaches to address underlying world views (e.g., colonialism, biomedicine) that often exist in health systems and can impede progress to advance health equity
- Identify ways to address barriers and enhance facilitators to advance health equity in public health organizations and systems
Related resources:
Health equity frameworks as a tool to support public health action: A rapid review of the literature
Health equity frameworks as a tool to support public health action: A curated list
Reference
National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. (2024). Learning from Practice: Implementing health equity frameworks to guide health equity action. Antigonish, NS: NCCDH, St. Francis Xavier University.
Tags: Leadership & capacity building, Methods & tools, Health equity frameworks, Organizational capacity, Modify and orient interventions, Document, Report / Document, Learning from Practice