337553
Role of public health data in advancing health equity in all policies
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
: 10:55 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
New York is a city of neighborhoods with a gap of 11 years in life expectancy between the healthiest and least healthy community. It is not coincidental that communities with the highest disease burden have the largest concentration of poverty and the largest concentration of people of color. Differences in neighborhood conditions (housing quality, scarcity of healthy food or recreational spaces, public safety etc.) reflect the inequitable distribution of power and resources, a legacy of segregation and other bad polices, and current predatory behaviors by industry. A “health equity in all policies” approach is necessary to explain the data – why the maps look the way they do, and essential for joint planning to address the social, political and environmental determinants of health. In my presentation I will discuss how the NYC Health Department is using data, which shows a clustering of poor health outcomes in the same neighborhoods irrespective of causal pathway or condition, to advance health equity. I will describe why I am shifting the structure of the Department to have a stronger presence on the ground by re-imagining district health centers as neighborhood health hubs. Drawing on a rich history of district health centers in NYC, the neighborhood health hubs will provide a physical space for co-location of different services, including medical services but many more (for example communal kitchens, urban gardens, breastfeeding support, free wifi, etc.), to better serve communities and support joint community health planning processes which can enable “health equity in all policies”.
Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Learning Objectives:
Describe how public health data can be used to a) map injustice and generate outrage and political will for change and b) enable better targeting of interventions and resources.
Discuss how a “health equity in all policies” approach can be put into practice, and list some practical obstacles to joint community planning to advance health equity.
Keyword(s): Activism, Public Health Policy
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the NYC Health Commissioner responsible for the work of the NYC Health Department that I will discuss in the presentation.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
