Health Department Assessment & Roadmap

The Health Department Assessment & Roadmap, developed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are designed to help state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments advance their essential work of addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) through law and policy change.

By providing an appraisal of an organization’s readiness to use law and policy to address the root causes of inequities and then offering suggested activities for improvement, the assessment and roadmap offer an effective approach for expanding organizational capacity to address health equity. 

To aid health departments in using the assessment and roadmap for their varied needs, we are offering our full guide as well as selected portions of the guide as downloads.

The assessment section of this resource allows health departments to assess their readiness to address SDOH across five priority areas:

1. Institutional commitment
2. Staff competence in SDOH
3. Partnerships and engagement
4. Data for action
5. Framing and communication

The leadership of a health department (or a program or function within a health department) can get an overview of their readiness by taking the short assessment. A health department can assess their readiness in all five priority areas by downloading the full assessment for distribution to staff at different levels of the organization. For a more focused examination, assessments for each of the five priority areas can be downloaded individually to meet specific needs. Tables 2 and 3 are provided for ease of use in scoring the assessment.

After completing the assessment, a health department can use the readiness roadmap of suggested activities to reflect on new strategies for incorporating SDOH, equity, law, and policy into their work.

This publication is part of a suite of resources tailored to the specific needs of health departments, based on ChangeLab Solutions' literature reviews and interviews with public health practitioners.