How to Use Law & Policy to Affect Health Equity: Part 2 of Exploring the Social Determinants of Health, Health Equity & the Law

Adopting an equity-focused approach in order to address widening health disparities is crucial to achieving the primary purpose of public health departments: improving health outcomes at a population level. 

Populations with the worst health outcomes stand to benefit the most from public health interventions that are equitably implemented. Moreover, many preventable health problems share the same root causes, so identifying intersections, sharing expertise, and joining forces with community members and other cross-sector partners is critical, particularly when resources are limited and health departments’ capacity is stretched thin.

This free training — brought to you by ChangeLab Solutions and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Law Program — is the second in a two-part series that discusses how public health laws affect social determinants of health and health equity. Before you watch this training, we encourage you to watch Part 1, which explains how structural racism is rooted in our country’s legal history and how it contributes to the inequities we see today.

This module describes actions that health departments can take to close inequitable gaps in health outcomes and how health departments can use the tools of law and policy to address social determinants of health and advance health equity.

This training will , , ,

• Describe how laws affect health and health equity
• Examine fundamental drivers of health inequity
• Discuss the role of health departments in supporting equity-centered policies
• Illustrate how concepts of health equity and social determinants of health can be applied in practice

If you are a TRAIN user, please register for this course through TRAIN. To learn more about earning the Public Health Law Academy certificate of completion, see the complete training plan.

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