PI Perspectives
Our take on important issues affecting the prevention community.
As we begin 2022, it’s clear that the inequitable impacts of climate change, the pandemic, and racial injustice share common roots: existing systems that accept as a cost of doing business the oppression, exploitation, and degradation of BIPOC communities to enrich the few. They also share a structural solution: adopting a community health-based economy. Our vision is that we can replace a carbon-based economy with an economy that is sustainable for people, communities, and the planet.
Prevention Institute’s analysis of California’s proposed budget highlights investments that advance health, safety, wellbeing, and equity. Organized around three priorities—promoting safety and healing, creating healthy community environments, and strengthening prevention-oriented health systems—it identifies key opportunities for advocates to support equitable outcomes across California.
With the influx of $43 billion in flexible state and local recovery funds via the American Rescue Plan Act and a historic state surplus, it's time for California's leaders to “bake in” health equity and racial justice to public funding programs at every stage. By designing and implementing funding programs grounded in California’s commitment to equity, we can foster community health, safety, and wellbeing in our state’s racially and economically diverse communities. This brief recommends ways to operationalize equity in each phase of a public funding program.
Health justice is not just a cause or an idea, but the way forward for public health agencies and communities alike. This blog was originally published in Bill of Health.