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Early Resources

Banner for Early Development Level Resources

All the resources in this page fall under the "Early" Development Level, which corresponds with a 1-2 on the Equity Development scale. A "1" means work from each competency has not yet started or is in a learning stage. A "2" can be interpreted as activities that have been planned but not started, or in initial/pilot stages of implementation. Any of these resources can be helpful with work in each competency that is in "Early" stages.

Type Title Description
Examples Health Equity Bank of Job Applicant Interview Questions List of health equity interview questions that can be asked for any position and desired skills and abilities to look for in a candidate.
Examples Committing to Building and Retaining a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce to Improve Health Equity Rural Health Information Hub mentions some workforce recruitment and retention strategies to support a diverse workforce. The website also includes examples of rural communities building diverse and inclusive workforces. Rural Resource
Examples CDPH HRD Recruitment and Hiring Tips and Tricks The California Department of Public Health (CDPH), Human Resources Division (HRD) shares recruitment and hiring tips and tricks with an equity & diversity inclusive lens. This document includes information on crafting job descriptions, developing equity, diversity, and inclusive statements, and creative ways to promote job listings.
Templates Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy - SHRM This Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy template from The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a great template for organizations to use and modify to fit their needs.
Trainings New Resources and Creative Strategies for Recruiting Candidates for Health Departments This training has an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion in recruitment for health departments. The training covers understanding candidate motivation, developing effective recruitment materials, and how emphasizing the mission-driven work of public health agencies can help attract the best candidates.
Webinars CDPH Equity TA Team Office Hours: Hiring This CDPH Equity Technical Assistance Team Office Hour has two guest panelists from Marin and Madera County who share successful practices in hiring, working with human resources (HR) to remove barriers, and ideal places to advertise your job listings.
Guides Creating a Culture of Belonging : A Guide for Retention This guide, from the State of Colorado, provides information on why retaining a diverse workforce is important, initial steps and measurements organizations can take, and onboarding new employees into a culture of belonging.
Guides Martin County Diversity Hiring Toolkit This toolkit is intended to provide information, tools, and resources to recruit for vacant positions in partnership with HR, with a focus on building a high quality, diverse applicant pool and a more inclusive hiring process.
Guides Ensuring a Diverse Workforce : A Guide for Inclusive Hiring Practices This guide, from the State of Colorado, provides several recommendations to ensure the workforce represents the community it serves. Included are resource such as a position description checklist, job announcement checklist, sample interview questions and more.
Type Title Description
Examples Public Health Alliance - Health Equity Coordinator Job Description An example of a Health Equity Coordinator job description from the Public Health Alliance of Southern California.
Examples Santa Barbara Health Equity Coordinator Job Description An example of a Health Equity Coordinator job description from Santa Barbara County.
Articles Get Serious About Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion : 4 Reasons You Need a Dedicated DEI Team This article may be helpful for organizations that are looking into forming a dedicated equity team. A section on how to support your dedicated equity team upon formation is also included.
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Type Title Description
Trainings Western Region Public Health Training Center - Health Equity Course This training is a short (estimated 30 minutes) introduction on the concept of health equity with powerful resources and learning tools.
Trainings Prevention Institute Health Equity and Prevention Toolkit The Health Equity and Prevention Primer (HEPP) leverages expertise from state and LHJ employees and equity leaders to build seven different training modules including Community Factors & How They Influence Health Equity; Enhancing Effective Partnerships for Health Equity; and Measurement and Evaluation for Health Equity. The toolkit focuses on how equity and prevention interventions can be combined to increase the health and safety of the community.
Webinars Health Equity in Rural Communities This webinar discusses rural health equity efforts in the state of Colorado and contains supplemental documents of real-life examples of equity work. While this resource is Colorado-centric, it is a helpful introduction to the concept of rural health equity and multi-partner collaboration necessary when addressing inequities in small, rural communities. Rural Resource
Guides ASTHO Health Equity and Public Health Accreditation Guide This is an introduction to equity from the Association of State and Territorial Health Offices (ASTHO) during the process of public health accreditation. The guide reviews how to integrate equity into your health department for accreditation, with real world examples from other health departments.
Frameworks The Health Equity Framework This article describes a Health Equity Framework (HEF) model to understand how health outcomes are affected by the complex relationships between people and their environment. The framewok is a tool that allows public health workers to understand and reflect on how addressing health inequities in their community can lead to positive changes in mutliple spheres of influence, from the entire community down to the individual.
Articles What Are Health Disparities and Health Equity? We Need to be Clear This brief article defines the concepts of health disparities and health equity in easy-to-understand terms. The article also explains why solid definitions are important when working with equity, and how language can help mitigate disparities.
Articles What is Health Equity? A Definition and Discussion Guide This report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, contains definitions of health equity terms, key stages to enact equity in your organization, and examples of advancing health equity. It also serves as a model for enacting group discussions around what equity means to an organization and what equity “action” looks like.
Type Title Description
Examples Power-building Partnerships for Health: Lessons from Santa Barbara About Building Power to Protect Farmworker Health and Advance Health Equity This article highlights the importance of relationship building within Power-Building Partnerships for Health (PPH) and discusses Santa Barbara County Public Health Department’s collaboration with two community organizing groups.
Templates Partnership Assessment Tool for Health (PATH) This fillable tool is intended for community-based organizations (CBOs) and healthcare organizations engaged in partnerships to provide services to populations in need. The tool includes a partnership questionnaire and discussion guide to facilitate future meetings.
Templates PATH Addendum This tool is an addendum to PATH that allows for CBOs and healthcare organizations to identify benchmark characteristics within partnerships that advance health equity.
Templates Preparing for Successful Public Meetings: Checklist for Before, During, and After This tool provides a short, accessible checklist for preparing successful public meetings with communities and partners.
Trainings Essentials of Collaboration This 1-hour interactive course examines how efficient teamwork can result in improved population health. Using a case study to explain essential principles, you will receive guidance on breaking down silos, aligning activities across sectors, and cooperating effectively. The course's definition of a successful collaboration lays the groundwork for teaming up with others to improve your community.
Guides Resources for Collaboration and Power Sharing This guide is for health departments seeking to share authority with community power-building organizations (CPBOs) and provides action-oriented steps to improve collaboration.
Guides Planning Public Engagement: Key Questions for Local Officials This guide provides 14 key questions for local agencies to consider when engaging with the public.
Guides Strengthening and Sustaining Public Engagement: A Planning Guide for Communities This guide instructs local governments, elected officials, and/or school systems on how to strengthen and sustain public engagement in planning strategies. Considerations such as types of engagement, when to prioritize engagement, and how to build more robust engagement methods are included.
Guides Promoting Effective Public Participation at Governing Body Meetings: Opportunities to Deepen Public Participation and Trust This publication provides suggestions to improve the process of receiving public input during local agency meetings and opportunities to deepen public participation and trust.
Guides Effective Public Engagement through Strategies and Communication This guide serves as a tip sheet and offers communication strategies that local governments can incorporate into public engagement efforts. The sheet shares steps organizations can take before, during, and after engagement.
Guides Engaging Your Community : A Toolkit for Partnership, Collaboration, and Action This toolkit is designed to help organizations build effective partnerships, carry out creative outreach initiatives, and develop persuasive communications that speak to various community groups and populations. The toolkit provides instructions for conducting self-evaluations of a partnership, as well as outreach techniques to involve community residents and other organizations. It also provides resources for enhancing these tactics to increase organizational capacity.
Guides Integration to Improve Health: Partnership Models between CBOs and Healthcare Organizations This resource focuses on common approaches organizations can take by working together to approve health outcomes through service models, financial relationships, data, partnerships, and governance. Each category has a variety of real-life examples that serve as additional learning opportunities for readers.
Guides Resources for Collaborations and Power Sharing Between Government Agencies and Community Power- Building Organizations This guide outlines the benefits of partnerships between government entities and community power-building groups and offers a variety of models for collaboration.
Frameworks Build Health Challenge: Keys to Collaboration The BUILD Health Challenge (BUILD) is a framework that identifies four dynamic stages of collaboration that are essential to developing successful partnerships aimed at promoting health equity. The stages include examples, and takeaways for organizations for Building Relationships, Establishing a Team, Defining Roles and Creating Structure, and Communicating to Build Trust.
Articles CBOs Perspective on Improving Health and Social Services Integration This article discusses the perspectives of CBOs on service delivery and suggestions for improving health system partnerships. To create lasting and sustainable partnerships, CBOs must feel supported and the relationship must be mutually beneficial.
Articles Collaboration Between Health Systems and CBOs This executive summary highlights different approaches to overcoming early challenges in forming new partnerships. It provides examples and discusses common themes and lessons learned. Each strategy ensures the voices of the CBOs and their communities are valued in the priority setting and decision-making process.
Articles Power-Building Partnerships for Health: Key Impacts 2018-2019 This resource highlights the key impacts of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII) and the Public Health Alliance of Southern California's pilot project to develop and support partnerships between five local California health departments and community organizing groups. The partnerships focus on building community power to improve systems and/or policy change that advance health equity.
Articles Advancing Healthcare and CBOs to Address Social Determinants of Health This executive summary focuses on the collaboration between three healthcare-CBO partnerships. It is intended to help refine relationship with current or existing partners and/or agencies exploring new collaborations.
Type Title Description
Templates Community Engagement & Participation Checklist Developed by PolicyLink, this outline identifies important components of an authentic and participatory community engagement process. Characteristics of participatory community change include trust, shared vision, partnerships with public agencies, capacity, and policy action.
Templates Community Engagement Assessment Tool This Community Engagement Assessment Tool serves as a guide to help grow an organization’s understanding of community engagement and define its intentions. Organizations can use this tool with staff and external partners to assess strengths and gaps.
Templates Community Engagement Toolkit This toolkit shares a series of tools for the development of an equitable and strategic community engagement plan. It includes tools for exploring areas in the spectrum of community engagement, asset-based community development, and capacity building.
Trainings Community Engagement: The People's Approach to Improving Health and Social Outcomes This course focuses on community participation and the active role of local health departments in community engagement methods. It includes a summary of case studies, best practices, and methods for fostering community discourse and participation, as well as for incorporating community involvement into public health practice.
Guides Partnering with Community- Based Organizations for More Broad- Based Public Engagement This webinar discusses rural health equity efforts in the state of Colorado and contains real-life examples of equity work. While this resource is Colorado-centric, it is a helpful introduction to the concept of rural health equity and multi-partner collaboration necessary when addressing inequities in small, rural communities. Rural Resource
Frameworks Community Engagement Framework This community engagement framework assesses the strengths of an organization instead of starting from a needs-based approach. Values in this framework include integrity, transparency, collaboration, equity, and self-reflection.
Type Title Description
Templates Partnership Agreement Template This customizable template helps partners think through their common purpose, roles, responsibilities, activities, and desired outcomes. It also provides recommendations for each section of the partnership agreement.
Templates Collaborative Health-A Health in All Policies Presentation This customizable PowerPoint template helps to build support for Health in All Policies (HiAP). The package for this resource also includes a guide on how to support HiAP initiatives in government, which is a companion to the template. It is recommended that organizations review both before giving the presentation to internal or external partners.
Trainings Using Message Framing Tools to Build and Suistain Cross-Sector Partnerships This training provides public health professionals with messaging tools for effective communication with other sectors. It describes what framing is and why it is important when communicating to external stakeholders. It takes about 30 minutes to complete and provides participants with a certificate upon completion.
Webinars Fostering Community Partnerships to Advance Health Equity This webinar describes how the Alameda County Public Health Department has worked with the housing sector to advance population health.
Webinars Cross Sector Collaboration Making Partnerships Work for Your Community This webinar provides real life examples of cross-sector partnerships along with resources and tools to strengthen these partnerships.
Webinars Centering Equity in Multisector Collaborations This webinar helps participants think through their values as they develop partnerships. Additionally, it details how to track equity in partnerships and how to integrate lived experience expertise into partnerships.
Webinars Health Equity in Cross Sector Partnerships This training provides examples of cross sector partnerships and explains why these partnerships are essential to advancing health equity.
Guides Grassroots Organizations on Collaborating with Public Health Agencies This guide describes how grassroots organizations and public health agencies can work together to advance health equity and racial justice. The document describes processes for bringing intentionality to agreements, leveraging community expertise, and integrating equity into organizational goals. Community spotlights are also included for each section, including one from Monterey County, California.
Guides Initiating Cross- Sector Partnerships to Advance Population Health This guide provides examples of cross-sector partnerships collaborating to address the social determinants of health. The document goes step by step into finding the right partner, creating a lasting relationship, and creating lasting goals within the collaboration.
Guides The Guide to Cross-Sector Collaboration This guide provides actionable steps on how to find, build and develop cross-sector partnerships.
Guides Stanford Social Innovation Review-Cross Sector Leadership This interactive guide covers several topics including the need for cross-sector leadership, essential skills for leaders, creating a culture of collaboration and establishing cross-sector networks. It also contains profiles of leaders across industries (e.g., business, non- profit, government etc.).
Frameworks Prevention Institute: Collaboration Multiplier Collaboration Multiplier is a framework and tool for analyzing collaborative efforts across sectors. It is designed to serve as a starting point for understanding the contributions of different fields and for building effective interdisciplinary efforts through partnership.
Type Title Description
Examples Joint Organizational Commitment to Anti-Racism and Racial Equit The Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), along with other public health organizations, commit to anti-racism and racial equity by publishing a joint organizational commitment statement. This document includes the purpose of addressing anti-racism, the agreed upon foundations of the approach to anti-racism and racial equity, and the commitments with specific activities on how to move forward.
Examples Health Equity Team 2021 Year in Review This document is an end of the year equity celebration from Winnebago County, Wisconsin. The publicly posted review summarizes the health department’s mission statement, equity team accomplishments, equity internal infrastructure, community equity projects that the health department took part in, and goals for the next year. This is a great example that showcases commitment to equity and transparency.
Webinars Organizational Capacity for Health Equity Action Initiative Webinar Series This webinar series discusses integrating health equity in your public health department. While Webinar #1 is not relevant, others in the series include "Living health equity values within public health organizations" and "Governance and decision-making for health equity." Note: Please scroll down to the "Knowledge Sharing" section to see the list of webinars.
Guides Mission Statement Development Guide The Office of Health Equity TA Team presents a list of compiled resources for developing mission and vision statements. The guide also contains real-world examples of equity mission statements.
Guides Building Organizational Capacity to Advance Health Equity Created by the CDC, this is a list of actionable steps and recommendations that organizations can take to advance health equity internally. In addition to the recommendations, the guide also includes an example from Nashville and Davidson County, TN and a checklist that organizations can use to facilitate discussions about future organizational equity commitments.
Guides A Rising Tide: Increasing Rural LHDs Capacity to Address the Social Determinants of Health The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) presents a guide focused on the unique challenges and experiences of local health departments integrating equity into their organization. The guide shares results of an assessment completed with five rural health departments, which discusses foundational equity work in each department and digs deeply into motifs across the interviews. Recommendations are included to assist rural health departments address social determinants of health in their organizations. (Rural Resource)
Guides Building a Movement, Transforming Institutions Developed by PolicyLink, this guide defines health equity and gives actionable steps for how to further incorporate equity into your organization. The guide is broken down into sections covering topics such as “Building Leadership for Health Equity,” “Leveraging Institutional Capital for Health Equity Sustainability,” and “Framing and Communication for Health Equity.” The guide has recommended resources for further reading, which includes examples from California health departments and other public health institutions.
Guides Choosing Health Equity:Understanding Decision Points in Policy and Practice This is a useful discussion guide for public health advocates and decision-makers. A framework within the guide details four steps to implement equity and has discussion questions for each step. In addition to the questions, the guide explains the purpose of asking the questions and examples for further reading into the concepts behind questions. Organizations can benefit from expressing the purpose behind their equity work and verbalizing it to both internal and external partners.
Frameworks Making Health Equity a Priority As part of the University of Victoria’s Equity Lens in Public Health project, this framework outlines six key strategies that organizations can take to commit to health equity. For each strategy, the guide explains the reasoning behind choosing this specific step in simplified and explicit language.
Articles Health Equity: Moving from the Margins to the Center This article is written by Dr. Anthony Iton from the California Endowment. The article serves both as an explanation of foundational equity concepts and as a reflection on Dr. Iton’s time serving communities in California. Principles of equity, and the reasoning behind them, complement the real-life examples of Dr. Iton’s time developing power- building activities for the community of Alameda County.
Type Title Description
Examples Health Equity Guide: Case Study Rhode Island Braids Funding to Create Health Equity Zone To address the social determinants of health, leaders of the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) utilized multiple sources of funding to establish “Health Equity Zones.” This case study highlights the ways in which RIDOH leaders increased access to funding and resources to its community partners to enhance population health outcomes.
Templates Santa Clara County Public health : Budget Equity Assessment Tool This resource, developed by Santa Clara County Public Health, is an example of a racial equity tool that is intended to put out a procedure and a series of inquiries for determining how budget proposals will help or hurt communities, particularly those of color.
Webinars Institute for Local Government : Equitable Funding Strategies for Local Government This webinar focuses on equitable funding strategies that local governments can implement to operationalize conversations around equity in order to improve community engagement for inclusive decision-making.
Guides Health Equity Guide: Allocate Resources Developed by Human Impact Partners, this health equity guide lays out nine strategic steps that leadership, staff, and departments can take to equitably allocate funding and resources.
Guides Contracting for Equity: Best Local Government Practices that Advance Racial Equity in Government Contracting & Procurement This issue brief, developed by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), shares common policy and practice strategies local governments can implement to improve contracting for equity within the public sector. This issue brief highlights achievements and barriers jurisdictions face in contracting and procurement practices for equity.
Frameworks Equity Pyramids The Equity Pyramid, developed by the Rhode Island Department of Health and modeled after the CDC’s Health Impact Pyramid, is a resource that local health departments can use to prioritize work efforts, equitably allocate funding and resources, and inclusively involve community partners to advance health equity.
Articles Integrating Equity in a Public Health Funding Strategy This article presents a practical approach for incorporating equity into common and competitive funding procedures for public health programs and demonstrates how integrating equitable strategies can better direct decision-makers in allocating funding and resources.
Type Title Description
Examples Change Internal Practices & Processes As part of Human Impact Partners' Health Equity Guide, the Change Internal Practices and Processes strategy addresses how to change internal practices and align internal processes to advance equity. Difficult work must be done to reveal how current policies and practices support or impede equity, and barriers must be removed to advance equity work.
Examples Health Equity Guide - Additional Resources This is a suite of resources intended to help health departments change internal practices and processes. Resources include Contracting for Equity, Developing an Equity Impact Statement, Equitable Hiring Handbook, and more.
Templates State Health Department Organizational Self-Assessment for Achieving Health Equity: Toolkit and Guide to Implementation The State Health Department Organizational Self-Assessment for Achieving Health Equity: (Self-Assessment) can help health departments establish a baseline measure of capacity and areas for improvement to incorporate equity. This Self-Assessment is designed to help guide strategic planning and organizational development, as well as initiate conversations around equity.
Type Title Description
Examples County Health Rankings & Roadmaps This website can serve as a resource or example of the type of data that can be collected for all counties. It doesn’t, however, address the barriers of collecting certain demographic data in smaller counties.
Webinars Achieving Equity with Results- Based Accountability Under the framework of Results-Based Accountability (RBA), this 1.5-hour webinar covers multiple topics geared toward equity in a community starting with data. Topics span from using disaggregated data to understand racial inequities to basic information on racism, racial equity, and racial bias. The webinar ends with examples, success stories, and resources from local health departments and beyond.
Guides COVID-19 Health Equity Playbook for Communities, Strategies and Practices for an Equitable Reopening and Recovery (Page 53) The Data Section of this report provides examples of dashboards from local health departments and lists state data tools to further explore.
Guides Gathering Data and Information from the City of Long Beach Office of Equity Toolkit (Page 14-15) This toolkit provides guiding questions and examples of how to apply an equity lens to multiple strategies, including gathering data and information (of interest for this competency). The guiding questions span different levels in the spectrum of early, established, and strong.
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Type Title Description
Webinars Promoting Health Equity by Uniting Sectors Around Shared Data ($3 fee to watch) This 1-hour webinar covers successful practices for data sharing as well as improving multi-sector collaboration and communication to address social determinants of health.
Guides Community and Stakeholder Engagement (Page 65-70) In this section of the COVID-19 Health Equity Playbook, CDPH provides actionable steps towards more empowering community engagement. The section gives the basic principles of engagement, real life examples of activities to solidify agreements and trust, and additional resources to explore the concept more.
Frameworks IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation from the City of Long Beach Office of Equity Toolkit (Page 28-29) This toolkit provides guiding questions and examples of how to apply an equity lens to multiple strategies, including gathering data and information (of interest for this competency). The guiding questions span different levels in the spectrum of early, established, and strong. Additionally, the appendix of this toolkit includes the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation, which can be used to guide shared analysis with external stakeholders from “Inform” to “Empower.”
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.