We are in danger of returning to "normal"
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Let's not miss the opportunity to advance health equity and racial justice during our nation's recovery from the pandemic.
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In-person gatherings, in-classroom learning, in-restaurant dining … After more than a year of struggling through a pandemic, vaccinations have created some light at the end of the tunnel, and many people are seeking "a return to normal." That’s what we’re worried about. Along with the relief that accompanies these welcome developments, it would be far too easy to greet them in complacency. Pandemic fatigue; the rush to spend an influx of new governmental resources; and resistance to take on the hard work of coming to terms with how we got to where we are, dismantling those systems, and building community-centered, equity-driven systems and structures could drive action toward default approaches at the expense of just and health-promoting approaches. The social and racial inequities that were laid bare during the pandemic and the growing awareness of structural racism that was sparked by last summer’s mass uprising for racial justice are just two reasons we cannot slip back to ‘normal’. Doing so would be a step backward and a missed opportunity to advance health equity and racial justice. Fighting for an equitable recovery will not be the easy path, but it’s the calling that drives us at Prevention Institute. We hope you will join us as we continue the hard fight ahead. One of PI’s 2021 priorities is insisting on and helping to shape an equitable recovery from multiple assaults: the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating economic crisis, and the societal toll of ongoing systemic racism. The work we were engaged in between January and May emphasized collaborative efforts to redesign systems that were producing health inequities and racially unjust health outcomes long before the pandemic began. We know that if these systems are not redesigned, we will end up with a recovery where communities of color and communities of low income will continue to suffer from limited access to the opportunities and health-promoting resources they need to thrive. Three bodies of our work have begun to underscore actions that we believe will drive equitable recovery:
- Policy wins at the federal, state, and local levels
- An emphasis economic justice and equity as the foundation for COVID relief efforts in the American Recovery Plan Act
- California investments in park equity
- Support for Multnomah County’s public health framework to prevent violence through prevention, intervention, collaboration, and resilience.
- Tools and resources that build capacity across multiple communities; including,
- Emerging work that embeds health equity and racial justice in operationalized systems change, including:
Details about this work are below.
<<First Name>>, this country is at crossroads: return to normal or seize the moment. We hope you will join us to ensure we are not lulled back to normal but driven to continued action for health equity and racial justice.
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Prevention Institute's 2021 work insisting on and helping to shape an equitable recovery
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1. Policy wins at the federal, state, and local levels
After four challenging years of advocating for federal policies that center justice and equity, our long-term policy advocacy efforts are finally bearing fruit. The Biden-Harris Administration emphasized economic justice and equity as the foundation for COVID relief efforts in the American Recovery Plan Act; reversed the harmful public-charge immigration rule; and proposed greater investments in violence prevention, including a historic $5 billion investment over eight years in support of evidence-based community violence prevention programs through the American Jobs Plan.
In California, we supported the CA Work and Family Coalition’s successful effort to pass SB 95, which ensures paid family sick leave for families impacted by COVID-19, and advocated for making the vaccine distribution system more equitable, as we describe in this Sacramento Bee op-ed. Our advocacy for park equity is at least partially responsible for the California governor’s recent proposal to invest nearly $1 billion to increase access to the outdoors in park-poor communities. Our research has shown that investments like these could increase life expectancy in Black and Latino communities. Our California policy work is supported by The California Endowment, California Wellness Foundation, Blue Shield of California Foundation, and St. Joseph Community Partnership Fund. Our park-equity research was funded by the Urban Institute through funds provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
In Oregon, PI advised and supported Multnomah County in developing a public health framework to prevent violence that incorporates prevention, intervention, collaboration, and resilience elements. Based on the framework and the budget request that was guided by it, Multnomah County will invest $4 million in gun violence prevention programs; fund interdisciplinary teams in justice, public health, and human services; expand a community healing initiative; and initiate neighborhood-based projects in three neighborhoods experiencing health disparities and violence; among others. This work helped the Multnomah County Health Department move from “planning mode” to “advocacy and action” mode in response to the increase in community violence that was spurred by the pandemic.
2. Tools and resources that build capacity across multiple communities
- Online toolkit to prevent suicide and trauma during catastrophic events:
During the last year, rates of preventable self-harm and suicide increased among young people and Black Americans. Suicide among essential workers also increased. To ensure a response to these crises that emphasizes prevention and multisector collaboration, Prevention Institute partnered with the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) to develop a new toolkit that shares strategies for preventing suicide and trauma during catastrophic events like the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, winter storms, or other disasters. The toolkit includes online learning modules, suicide prevention planning interviews with agency leaders in Colorado and Santa Clara County, CA, and a new social media video about Building Healing Communities. PI also led peer learning forums on trauma-informed systems and prioritizing equity and community wellbeing in the wake of catastrophic events. This work is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Making Connections Backpack in support of wellbeing: Community-led strategies for creating social connection
The COVID-19 pandemic eroded the “pillars of wellbeing”—factors that our partner communities have identified as foundational for community mental health and wellbeing: belonging/connectedness, safety, trust, dignity, hope/aspiration, and control of destiny/self-determination. The Making Connections Backpack is a comprehensive guide to reinforcing the pillars of wellbeing using gender- and culture-relevant community-level approaches to improve mental health and wellbeing. It’s filled with strategies and lessons learned from five years of the Making Connections initiative, which was funded by Movember. Although the backpack was not specifically developed for the context of the pandemic, its content and the journey of the coalitions that carried out this work in diverse communities throughout the country can inform efforts to address the intensified social isolation the pandemic brought about.
- Community Safety Realized: A Framework for Preventing Violence:
To achieve an equitable recovery, we need to build a shared understanding that disparities in health outcomes—such as those we saw during the pandemic—are often rooted in structural racism and other forms of oppression. This is no less true when it comes to community safety. Community violence has increased during the pandemic as risk factors for violence, such as economic instability and social isolation, have increased. This prompted Prevention Institute and the Big Cities Health Coalition to develop Community Safety Realized: Public Health Pathways to Preventing Violence, a new tool designed to support health departments and other organizations as they work to prevent and address violence in their communities right now.
The report and framework describe the defining features of a public health approach to preventing community violence, sample strategies to achieve community safety, and core elements for effectiveness and sustainability. What’s different about this framework is that it makes the case that to create healing and change, we need to put racial justice at the center of the public-health approach to preventing violence. This project was funded by the Big Cities Health Coalition and the de Beaumont Foundation, and our dissemination efforts are supported by the Langeloth Foundation and the CARESTAR Foundation. In addition, PI highlighted successful efforts to shift funding from police and prisons to community-based programs and services for young people, such as in our podcast Community Safety Through Investing in Youth. We also collaborated with HAVI, Health Resources in Action, and Cure Violence Global on a joint campaign to ensure that street outreach workers were explicitly prioritized in early vaccine roll-out efforts.
3. Exemplar works in progress to operationalize health equity and racial justice in systems change
We’re nearing completion on a COVID-19 recovery policy roadmap for California in collaboration with our partners in the COVID-19 Public Health and Equity Collaborative. This work is supported by the Blue Shield of California Foundation and The California Wellness Foundation. We look forward to sharing more of our community-centered recommendations in a future update.
We are also co-designing an exciting new grant-making framework with the University of Utah and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a forthcoming national initiative, People, Parks, and Power: A National Initiative for Green Space, Health Equity, and Racial Justice. This multi-year funding program will build community-based organizations’ capacity to achieve policy and systems changes that increase equitable access to parks and green spaces in low-income communities of color in urban areas across the United States. We see park-equity work as central to a racially just, inclusive, and equitable recovery. Parks—like other systems and sectors (e.g. food and transportation)—have been historically disinvested in and produced racially unjust health inequities long before COVID-19 struck. Parks were also elevated as "essential" for a variety of reasons during the pandemic, and our collective ability to invest in a robust, racially just, strategic direction will be vital to an equitable recovery. |
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