What does it look like when a community has successfully integrated health and equity in all policies?
Health in All Policies (HiAP) is a collaborative approach to improving the health of a community by systematically incorporating health, sustainability, social justice, and equity considerations into decisionmaking across government departments, institutions, agencies, and policy areas.
Because decisionmaking processes in local government are complex and involve many sectors and stakeholders, moving a HiAP plan or policy from start to finish can take a significant amount of time. ChangeLab Solutions senior planner Erik Calloway recently published an article in the journal Chronicles of Health Impact Assessment to showcase 3 communities that have been pursuing HiAP for over 10 years. The case studies feature Minneapolis, MN; Seattle, WA; and Richmond, CA.
Although they took different approaches, each of the communities profiled in the article employed 5 key strategies to adopt and implement HiAP:
- Convene and Collaborate
- Engage and Envision
- Make a Plan
- Invest in Change
- Track Progress
These case studies demonstrate that although HiAP takes time to implement, each step taken in that direction makes subsequent steps easier. Integrating health and equity across a range of plans and policies shapes decisions, leads to actual community transformation, and improves community health outcomes.
Read the full journal article on the Chronicles of Health Impact Assessment website.