The integration of health equity into policy to reduce disparities: Lessons from California during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT: Racial and ethnic minoritized groups and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities experience longstanding health-related disparities in the United States and were disproportionately affected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. How departments of public health can explicitly address these disparities and their underlying determinants remains less understood. To inform future public health responses, this paper details how California strategically placed health equity at the core of its COVID-19 reopening and response policy, known as the Blueprint for a Safer Economy. In effect from August 2020 to June 2021, "the Blueprint" employed the use of the California Healthy Places Index (HPI), a place-based summary measure of 25 determinants of health constructed at the census tract level, to guid

SUBMITTER: Kwan AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11884665 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature