Public Health Equity Center

For more information contact:
Wesley Epplin, Policy Director, wepplin@hmprg.org

Overview

The Public Health Equity Center at Health & Medicine works to align government, policies, institutions, and people with the lofty goal of achieving health equity. This Center’s work includes policy research, coalition and partnership building, consulting and public planning, advocacy, and health organizing. Projects include public health system funding and capacity, governmental public health and other agency planning, and at the structural level, policy efforts to move toward an equitable distribution of the social determinants of health.

Learn More

Approach

How do we advance health equity? Our multi-pronged approach includes policy research, health planning, narrative change, policy advocacy, consulting, and more. The Center engages partners and provides education about policies and their relationship to advancing health equity. We center human rights as core to health equity, a long-term goal that takes building a movement. We grow the base of individuals, organizations, elected and appointed officials, and government institutions committed to health equity, equity more broadly, and social justice.

Our work includes:

  • Activating and participating in coalitions and collaborations
  • Consulting and planning with health departments and other public agencies
  • Policy research
  • Policy advocacy
  • Health organizing
  • Hosting educational events
  • Narrative change
  • Intersectoral collaboration
  • Interdisciplinary engagement 
  • Intersectional solidarity

Some of the frameworks and approaches that influence our work are listed here:

  • Social epidemiology
  • Eco-social theory
  • Social determinants of health framework
  • Health equity in all policies
  • Human rights
Bolstering the Public Health System

Learning from COVID-19

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Health & Medicine has sought to learn and share lessons from the crisis and our collective response to it. We want to better understand what went well and what didn’t with the response. What new tools or approaches were developed? What policies or executive orders were passed? One of the main areas we’re concerned with is public health funding, staffing, and capacity. We are conducting interviews, reviewing research, and will be sharing lessons from the pandemic, especially focused on funding for governmental public health.

Governmental Public Health Funding and Capacity

As mentioned above, one of our long-term areas of focus is governmental public health. Our staff have engaged in public health planning, helping to shape the community health improvement plans for the Chicago Department of Public Health and Cook County Department of Public Health. Public Health Equity Center staff have both partnered with and also sought to hold our local health departments accountable for their public health plans. One significant area of support for local health departments is increasing funding and ensuring that funds are used appropriately for staffing up and building capacity. This is both a long-term interest and relates to our project focused on learning lessons from COVID-19.

Public Health and Other Public Planning

Health & Medicine’s Public Health Equity Center is a go-to partner for many public health and government planning efforts. We engage in assessments, planning, and plan implementation.

Health & Medicine has long been invested in public planning broadly speaking, and health planning, in particular. Here are a few examples of significant public planning efforts that our staff have been involved with in recent years. Health & Medicine remains engaged in plan implementation and seeks partnerships with others looking to make progress on policies and programs that support ambitious plans for advancing health equity.

Collaborations/Partnership

We Will Chicago

  • Role: Research Lead for Public Health and Safety Pillar
  • About: A 10-year framework for citywide growth and vibrancy, We Will Chicago is a critical tool to guide the city’s future annual budgets, capital projects, and policy priorities to ensure public decision-making focuses on the needs of the entire city and all of its residents. This plan was developed in 2021-2022 and adopted by the City of Chicago’s Plan Commission in 2023.

Healthy Chicago 2025

  • Role: Contributor to community health improvement plan
  • About: Healthy Chicago 2025 is Chicago’s five-year community health improvement plan that focuses on racial and health equity to meet our goal of reducing the Black-white life expectancy gap. CDPH is required to develop both a community health assessment and community health improvement plan every five years for accreditation with both the state and the Public Health Accreditation Board. Health & Medicine is interested in contributing to the next community health assessment and community health improvement plan led by CDPH.

Community Health Assessment for Healthy Chicago 2025

  • Role: Contributing partner for changing the assessment to better focus on health equity
  • About: CDPH is required to develop both a community health assessment and community health improvement plan every five years for accreditation with both the state and the Public Health Accreditation Board. Health & Medicine consulted with CDPH to develop a stronger health equity approach to this assessment.

WePlan 2025: Cook County Community Health Assessment & Community Health Improvement Plan for Suburban Cook County, Illinois

  • Role: Contributor to assessment and plan
  • About: WePlan 2025 uses the Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) process to complete a comprehensive community health assessment (CHA) and community health improvement plan (CHIP). CCDPH is required to develop both every five years for accreditation with the state and the Public Health Accreditation Board.

Report on Cook County Committee On Addressing Bias, Equity, & Cultural Competency

  • Role: Committee Member
  • About: The Cook County Committee on Addressing Bias, Equity, and Cultural Competency was formed by four members of the Cook County Board of Commissioners to take a broad look at all facets of Cook County Government and to explore ways that we could work together, learn from each other, and move forward with a united plan to address inequities in Cook County.

Health Equity Strategy Paper for the On To 2050 Regional Plan

  • Role: Researcher and workgroup facilitator
  • About: Led by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), ON TO 2050 was “…adopted on October 10, 2018, and builds on the agency’s first comprehensive regional plan, GO TO 2040, which was released in 2010 and updated in 2014. Adoption of the plan guides transportation investments and frames regional priorities on development, the environment, the economy, and other issues affecting quality of life.”

Healthy Chicago 2.0

  • Role: Contributing Author; co-chair of the Root Causes committee
  • About: Healthy Chicago 2.0 was Chicago’s five-year community health improvement plan from 2016-2020. The Chicago Department of Public Health has said that the unfinished work of the plan means that it remains relevant. CDPH is required to develop both a community health assessment and community health improvement plan every five years for both state accreditation and the Public Health Accreditation Board.
Policy Action with Coalitions

Structural inequities shape the distribution of the social determinants of health. Our Public Health Equity Center works with community-based partners to support equity-focused policies and to hold government officials accountable. We also partner with government to make policy changes and conduct planning and consulting. Our staff members educate people using fact sheets, briefs, and holding public forums; change narratives through testimony, op-eds, forums, and reports; advocate for policy change; and organize health sector workers and organizations to support health equity in public policy.

Cook County Equity Taskforce: “Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle launched the Cook County Equity Fund Taskforce in 2021. The 50-member task force was charged with advising her administration on strategic investments from the Cook County Equity Fund, which addresses historical disparities and disinvestment in Black and Latino communities.”

Collaborative for Health Equity Cook County: Since 2016, the Public Health Equity Center at Health & Medicine has been engaged with the Collaborative for Health Equity Cook County. The group takes on a variety of issues related to health equity and is a space to link with like-minded organizations and individuals focused on building power for health equity.

Chicago Housing Justice Coalition: Since 2018, Health & Medicine has been a member of the Chicago Housing Justice Coalition (CHJC). For the past few years, the Public Health Equity Center has worked with CHJC to pass Just Cause for Evictions, a protection for renters that would reduce homelessness and protect public health. In addition to advocating for passage, we have helped develop and edit the ordinance. Here are examples of our work on Just Cause for Evictions:

Chicago Healthy Housing Coalition: Our Public Health Equity Center has been a part of this coalition advocating for a Chicago Healthy Housing Program since 2016. In addition to working with the coalition, our staff were also instrumental in ensuring this strategy was included in both Healthy Chicago 2.0 and Healthy Chicago 2025. Our efforts have included both editing the ordinance and advocating for passage.

Partnership for Healthy Chicago: Health & Medicine has been a charter member of the Partnership for Healthy Chicago since about 1998. According to its webpage, “The Partnership for Healthy Chicago (Partnership) is a partnership of diverse public health stakeholders working to achieve health equity by strengthening Chicago’s public health system and addressing social and structural determinants of health. As part of its efforts, the Partnership works with and through the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) to conduct community health assessments and develop community health improvement plans, which serve as part of the required documents for CDPH’s public health accreditation and certification as an Illinois local health department (IPLAN: Illinois Project for Local Assessment of Need).”

History of Public Health Leadership

Below is a list of efforts that the Public Health Equity Center has engaged in over the years. These include several policy change, coalition, and collaborative efforts. Some aspects of many of these areas of work continue today.

Stop General Iron: In 2021 and 2022, the Public Health Equity Center at Health & Medicine joined with the Collaborative for Health Equity Cook County to organize the health sector to support the #StopGeneralIron campaign, led by the Southeast Environmental Task Force on Chicago’s Southeast Side. The campaign successfully prompted the City of Chicago, specifically the Chicago Department of Public Health, to deny the permit to the General Iron facility. Our effort lent our public health voice to rally other health sector organizations and individuals to support this effort against environmental racism. We also sought to hold the City of Chicago and the Chicago Department of Public Health responsible for its public health commitments and responsibilities. Below are some examples of our efforts related to supporting the Stop General Iron campaign:

RWJF Culture of Health Leaders: From 2016-2019, Health & Medicine’s Policy Director, Wesley Epplin was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leaders program. His team included three other leaders, Maxx Boykin, Lilian Jiménez, and Felipe Tendick-Matesanz. Their initiative, Reimagine Health, linked to several health, racial justice, immigrant rights, and economic justice aspects of the Public Health Equity Center at Health & Medicine. The group’s keynote project was the Organizing Health Institute, which sought to train health workers in basic organizing concepts and community organizers in basic public health concepts.

Public Health Woke: This project was pursued alongside our colleagues at the Collaborative for Health Equity Cook County and as part of the Reimagine Health team. The group took action on the recommendations from Public Health Awakened titled, A Short Guide to Protecting Undocumented Residents and Their Families for the Benefit of Public Health and All Society.

Quentin D. Young Equity Project: Beginning in 2015, a Health & Medicine committee of board and staff worked to develop a pilot program to bring together activists from different backgrounds and sectors to build relationships and develop new approaches to achieving an equitable society. More than a typical “leadership” training program, the Project offered participants an opportunity to learn from justice-minded colleagues in other fields, create lasting networks, analyze current approaches, and collaboratively realize innovative and effective solutions to barriers to equity. The Quentin D. Young Equity Project sought to produce transdisciplinary approaches to complex social challenges.

Health & Medicine founder Dr. Quentin D. Young, 1923–2016

The 2016-17 Cohort: In the summer of 2016, Health & Medicine recruited our first cohort of QDY Equity Project activists. We received overwhelming interest and requests for information from over 50 professionals from diverse sectors. We were gratified by this strong interest, which demonstrates a true need in our city for interdisciplinary, collaborative conversation and collective action to address our most pressing challenges. We ultimately invited 31 participants to join our first cohort, which represented the range of voices and perspectives needed to foster innovative solutions, including diversity of gender, race, age, abilities, and other identities. Participants ranged from those in their 20s to 60s, with professional backgrounds including nursing, transportation, behavioral health, community development, and sustainable energy.

A full-day launch event, which grounded participants in the history of organizing and progressive social change and initiated project planning, was held on November 19, 2016. Participants then collaboratively planned six monthly meetings on the following topics: Economic Justice & Worker Rights, Whiteness & Privilege, Intersectionality of Immigration and Incarceration, Health Care Access, Climate Change, and Structural Segregation. Each meeting provided historical context, connected participants with leading thinkers, and provided time for dialogue and reflection. The cohort completed their time together at a celebration event on June 27, 2017.

Chicago United for Equity: Two Public Health Equity Center staff participated in the inaugural cohort of Chicago United for Equity. Training on how to conduct an equity impact analysis was a significant part of the cohort’s work. The group also conducted an equity impact analysis related to the then-proposed Chicago Public Schools conversion of the National Teachers Academy school from a grade school to a high school. The group found disproportionate impacts on local Black children and families, and the analysis contributed to successful legal efforts to get an injunction preventing CPS from following through on the proposal. The district then withdrew the proposal.

Erase the Database: The Public Health Equity Center supported efforts to rid both Chicago and Cook County governments of so-called “gang databases,” which have been shown repeatedly to be inaccurate, racist, and harmful to those listed and their families and communities. The campaign succeeded at the Cook County government level, and Health & Medicine provided a public health perspective in a letter and testimony against the database.

No Cop Academy: Health & Medicine was one of a few health-focused organizations to support the fight against the building of an approximately $100 million “cop academy” by the City of Chicago on the West Side. The coalition fought for the city to instead invest those dollars into community resources that actually create safety in communities, including better services and economic investment.

Health Equity in All Policies: Health & Medicine uses “health equity in all policies” as a direction for our policy work. In this sense, this is not one campaign or effort, but rather, a goal of many efforts. We also believe in advancing initiatives that instill health equity in all policies in government at all levels. In 2016, we were proud to support an effort led by the Chicago Department of Public Health to have a resolution and cross-department committee work toward health in all policies.

Our Other Initiatives and Programs