Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their full health potential and that no one is disadvantaged, excluded, or dismissed from achieving this potential. At Prevention Institute, we focus on how structural drivers of inequity—such as racism, sexism, and income inequality—impact communities. And we support community-based organizations and advocates in building power and capacity to change the systems that created these inequities in the first place.

Racial justice is a primary focus of Prevention Institute’s health equity work because racism, discrimination, and other forms of racial injustice have resulted in dramatic health and safety disparities for communities of color. Without closing racially unjust gaps in health outcomes, we will not be able to achieve health, safety, and wellbeing for our nation as a whole.

Our work is implemented through partnerships and collaborations with coalitions, public health departments, and community-based organizations; and centers the lived experiences of communities whose voices have been historically excluded and underrepresented. We bring our tools and frameworks to inform and build capacity toward effective prevention, racial justice, and health equity strategy development. Our staff are our champions who bring both professional and personal experience to the table and help shape equity solutions that support community health, safety, and wellbeing

Bridging Health Equity & Racial Justice > Content Buckets
Bridging Health Equity & Racial Justice > Content Buckets
Bridging Health Equity & Racial Justice > Content Buckets
Bridging Health Equity & Racial Justice > Content Buckets

THRIVE was created to answer the question, what can communities do to improve health and safety and promote health equity? THRIVE is a framework for understanding how structural drivers play out at the community level to impact the social-cultural, physical/built, and economic/ educational environments - i.e. the community determinants of health - and consequently, health and safety outcomes, and inequities in outcomes. THRIVE is also a tool for engaging community members and practitioners in assessing the status of community determinants, prioritizing them, and taking action to change them to

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Advancing health equity is a central piece of our work in preventing violence, as we aim to address the underlying systems and conditions of inequity that create and perpetuate violence in the first place.  Our research and trainings in this area address land use practices; community trauma and resilience; early childhood development; and the critical role of urban youth in fostering safe communities.

The opportunity to be healthy is not afforded to everyone in America. As a result, many preventable illnesses occur in higher frequency, earlier, and with greater severity among people living in concentrated poverty and in communities of color. With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Prevention Institute analyzed what has contributed to these inequities to determine a pathway forward to produce health equity.

This first-of-its-kind framework explores trauma at a community level. It explains how trauma is produced not only by experiencing interpersonal violence but also by experiencing structural violence – the harm that individuals, families, and communities experience from the economic and social structure; social institutions; and social relations of power, privilege and inequity that inhibit them from meeting their basic needs.

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Join us in advancing health equity and community empowerment — get in touch today to support the Prevention Institute’s efforts.