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Inclusive Decision-Making text with hands underneath
Definition: Include community members/residents and stakeholders in key decisions about program, policy planning, and evaluation activities.

Why It Matters: Too often, key decisions that impact communities most harmed by inequities are made without their perspectives. In order to drive change, health departments must build and share power with these communities by ensuring their voices are heard.
 
Type Title Description
Templates Nexus Community Partners: Community Engagement Assessment Tool This tool allows organizations to reflect on their community engagement techniques. It presents methods in a variety of ways, including assessment of potential partnerships, and identification of strengths and limitations.
Templates Three Dimensions of Power: Building a Multi-dimensional Approach to Power This worksheet helps LHJs assess their current approach to building power. It is based on the three dimensions of power: organizing people for direct political action, building organizational infrastructure and reshaping worldviews and ideologies.
Trainings Strategies to Advance Health Equity : State and Local Health Departments' Role in Building Pathways to Higher Education In this training, participants learn how education influences health outcomes and provides strategies for LHJs to help students be successful.
Webinars Advancing Health Equity Through Power Building and Narrative Change This webinar discusses the importance of building community power and provides strategies for LHJs to advance health equity change using public narrative.
Webinars Power-Building for Health Departments, Part 1 This webinar features Salomeh Wagaw, Program Director of Health Equity for Riverside County, California Department of Public Health, who discusses strategies for building power with communities.
Webinars Messaging Health Equity to Decision-Makers This webinar provides public health professionals with effective communication tools that could sway decision-makers to advance health equity through policy change.
Guides Involving People Most Affected by the Problem (University of Kansas Community Toolbox) This guide describes why inclusive decision- making is fundamental to advancing health equity. It also details how to pick partners, problem solve barriers to participation, and gives further resources to explore this topic.
Guides Power Moves: Your Essential Philanthropy Assessment Guide for Equity and Justice This guide provides an overview of the three dimensions of power: building power, sharing power and wielding power. It contains an organizational self- assessment, sample questionnaires, a discussion guide, best practices guidelines and other tools to help organizations determine their readiness to wield power specifically within their internal operations and grantmaking processes.
Articles Shifting and Sharing Power: Public Health's Charge in Building Community Power This article provides examples of health departments, including Alameda County, CA, sharing power with community organizations to work towards a common agenda. It also lists the three dimensions of power to consider when partnering for decision making.
Articles Forming Partnerships With Public Health Departments, Part 1:Why it's a Good Idea This article describes the benefits of partnerships between public health staff and community organizers.
Articles Why Community Power is Fundamental to Advancing Racial and Health Equity This article describes why community power building is more effective than community engagement to advance health and racial equity. The Alameda County Public Health Department is referenced as an example of a local health department partnering with a community-based organization in order to change housing policy.
Articles 8 Ways to Connect with Your Public Health Department The article is intended for community organizers who are interested in collaborating with public health department leaders to advance racial justice and health equity. The San Francisco Public Health Department and Alameda County Public Health Department are highlighted for their collaborations with community-based organizations.
Type Title Description
Guides Resources for Collaboration and Power Sharing Between Government Agencies and Community Power-Building Organizations This guide is for health departments seeking to share power with community power-building organizations (CPBOs) and provides action-oriented steps to improve collaboration.
Guides Making Equity Endemic in Solano County Using the Solano County Public Health Department as an example, this report includes recommendations on ways to support BIPOC communities during the post pandemic recovery.
Guides Ensuring Equity in COVID-19 Planning, Response, and Recovery Decision Making This resource helps health departments ensure that equity is at the center of the decision-making process before, during and after a public health emergency. It provides examples of California health departments, (e.g., Santa Clara County, City of Long Beach etc.), embedding equity into their COVID-19 response.
Type Title Description
Examples Alameda County Advances Equitable Housing Policies This resource describes in detail how the Alameda County Public Health Department created housing policy change in order to advance health equity. The Alameda County Housing Workgroup is comprised of residents, community organizers and other stakeholders seeking to address housing inequities.
Guides Activities to Deepen Your Power-Building Analysis This guide assists public health professionals who wish to dive deeper into power dynamics and assess their own power-building activities. The guide contains activities that individuals and their whole organizations can complete in order to find their own abilities, create a partner landscape analysis, and complete a basic power mapping activity.
Guides Health Departments and Authentic Community Engagement by Center for Public Health Practice & Research This study of LHJ staff across the United States describes in detail their community engagement activities and provides recommendations for authentic community engagement.