A COMMUNITY GUIDE TO
Advance Health Equity
Community-created strategies, practices, and resources to support healthier living for everyone.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Learn about the Guiding Principles for advancing health equity in communities.
Foundational Principle
Historical and ongoing racism, trauma, medical abuse and neglect, and discrimination impact all dimensions of public health. Acknowledging, validating and addressing this reality is central to all of the following principles from the guide.
1. Build Trust
Trusting relationships with community members, leaders and partners are essential to success.
2. Develop Culturally Competent Communications
Culturally and linguistically responsive communications strategies improve the relevance, resonance and reach of project materials.
3. Align with Community Priorities
Aligning project activities with community needs, interests and values facilitates community buy-in and participation.
4. Cultivate Partnerships
Cultivating new partnerships and building coalitions amplifies project impact.
5. Strengthen Capacity
Strengthening partner and community capacity supports the sustainability of current and future projects.
Drawing on lessons learned from the Vaccine Equity Project
Pressure-tested strategies and resources for organizations rooted in communities to promote better health outcomes for all.
Leveraging deep ties to local cultures, community-based organizations’ work provides meaningful and actionable lessons to improve health equity far beyond the pandemic and vaccination efforts.
Project partners, including community-based organizations, public health funders, evaluators, and communications strategists, collaborated to identify principles and strategies to advance health equity nationwide. This guide is designed to help community-based organizations in their everyday practice.
We are part of the communities we serve. People recognize us. There’s that level of trust and consistency.
Dolores Huerta Foundation
Impact
Between January 2021 and February 2024, the five community project partners made a significant impact across the nation.
1M
A million people reached
1520
Vaccination and educational events
315
Partnerships created
45
Languages and dialects served
RESOURCE LIBRARY
Check out the Resource Library to access customizable and example materials from community and project partners, including program and evaluation resources, communication plans, tip sheets, and example materials for outreach to a range of community types.
Community Partners
Project Partners
Financial Acknowledgement
This project is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award (CDC-RFA-IP21-2113: Immunization Research, Demonstration, Public Information and Education_Training and Clinical Skills Improvement Projects) totaling $6,700,000 with 100 percent funded by CDC/HHS. The contents of this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.