This guide, part of the A Practitioner's Guide for Advancing Health Equity tool developed by the Center for Disease Control, offers best practies for a facilitating meaningful community engagement process.
“Creating Change through Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development: A Policy and Practice Primer” highlights both promising and proven practices that demonstrate equity-focused arts and culture policies, strategies, and tools. The report describes the role of arts and culture across the nine sectors. Within each policy chart there are goals, policies, and implementation strategies that can help achieve communities of opportunity.
The primer was excerpted in Inside Arts magazine's Summer 2018 "Knowledge" issue and the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporation Magazine's 2018 "Art, Equity and Place" issue.
Cross-posted from the Healthy Food Access Portal
Celebrating stories of community action, impact, and hope through images captured by Healthy Food Financing Initiative grantees working to foster access to healthy food, good jobs, and opportunities to thrive.
Six years ago, PolicyLink, Reinvestment Fund, and The Food Trust worked in partnership with community and public stakeholders to craft a federal response to address the inequitable access to healthy food in rural and urban communities. The effort resulted in the launch of the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) program in 2011 by the Departments of Treasury (through the CDFI Fund), Agriculture, and Health and Human Services.
In just five years, the HFFI program distributed over 100 awards in over 30 states to support projects that are improving healthy food access in communities across the country. Throughout the year, the Healthy Food Access Portal has shared success stories of healthy food access projects. To celebrate this important milestone in the movement to improve food access, grantees were invited to share their own stories of their HFFI projects in action, through both photography and video.
My HFFI Story features the inspiring work of 15 HFFI grantees who are responding with action, engagement, collaboration, and innovation to ensure all communities have access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food. Read, view, and watch their stories here: https://equityis.exposure.co/my-hffi-story
Originally posted on Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
In Pittsburgh, a wave of baby boomer retirements is expected to leave the region with 80,000 more job openings than workers to fill them over the next decade. At the same time, 32,000 of the region’s workers are long-term unemployed, and unemployment is highest among black, mixed race, and Latino workers.
How to connect unemployed and under-employed workers of color to jobs in growing industries and industries with retiring baby boomers is a key question for Pittsburgh, but the region is far from alone. The Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce estimates that that by 2020 there will be 5 million more job openings in America than there are workers with the requisite skills to fill them. Yet, workers of color, particularly black workers, continue to face high levels of unemployment and inadequate access to relevant education and skills training.
Addressing continued unemployment for black workers and other workers of color is critical to families, employers, and the U.S. economy as a whole. The question is: how do we most effectively do that?
Urban corner store interventions have been implemented to improve access to and promote purchase of healthy foods. However, the perspectives of store owners and managers, who deliver and shape these interventions in collaboration with nonprofit, government, and academic partners, have been largely overlooked. We sought to explore the views of store owners and managers on the role of their stores in the community and their beliefs about health problems and solutions in the community.
From San Francisco, California to Flint, Michigan, the nation is facing an escalating housing crisis. Skyrocketing rents, inadequate infrastructure and stagnant wages are some of the barriers that are preventing millions of low-income Americans and communities of color from reaching their full potential. Healthy Communities of Opportunity: An Equity Blueprint to Address America’s Housing Challenges weaves together insights from the fields of healthcare, housing and economic security to outline a case for progressive, equity-focused policy.
"Healthy Communities of Opportunity provides an actionable roadmap to solve the interwoven housing and health crises that impact many people. This thorough review of the housing crisis from PolicyLink and their cross-sector approach to the solutions is a significant contribution to addressing the problem."
David Fukuzawa
Managing Director, The Kresge Foundation’s Health and Human Services programs
For low-income people of color, where you live not only determines access to education and employment but how long you live and how well you live. This new report from PolicyLink and the Kresge Foundation puts forth an action agenda to create far greater access to vibrant, healthy communities of opportunity.
Angela Glover Blackwell
PolicyLink President and CEO
The seventh and final report in the “City Voices: New Yorkers on Health” series, “Food and Nutrition: Hard Truths about Eating Healthy” shows that while food stamps and food pantries are critical resources, they are falling short when it comes to helping low-income New Yorkers maintain healthy eating habits. The report is the result of surveys and focus groups conducted in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, with residents representing more than 10 ethnic and cultural groups talking about the issues that have the greatest impact on their overall health and wellbeing. Community health advocates also express their views in a report that explores food insecurity and the ways that cultural differences may impact healthy eating habits.
Cross-posted from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
Economic growth is often seen as an antidote to poverty (e.g. rising tides lift all boats)—but increasing inequality in regions across the country underscores the fact that the benefits of growth are often narrowly shared.
In most regions, income and racial inequality are a legacy of myriad land-use, housing, education, tax, and economic development decisions that have disproportionately benefited wealthier, white households over lower-income and household of color. For example, for decades, public and private investment in regional transportation systems, infrastructure, and housing fueled the development of suburbs where racially restrictive covenants explicitly kept out black buyers; while redlining minimized investment in the urban core, where households of color remained.
Today, we see the reverse dynamic: Public and private investment is flowing back into many inner cities, increasing land and housing prices and disrupting social networks that act as the glue to already marginalized communities. This “reinvestment” is fueling a diaspora of community residents, especially black and Latino families, who can no longer afford to stay in their rapidly changing neighborhoods.
But where, when, and how can we have frank civic conversations about who benefits from regional economic decisions—where diverse stakeholders can come together, unpack complex issues, and explore lasting solutions?