Health Equity

The Network for Public Health Law’s Racial Health Equity Legal and Policy Cohort (RHE Cohort) helps public health departments, community organizations, and advocates use law and policy to address structural racism and advance racial justice. Through tailored legal technical assistance, training, and peer learning, the program strengthens the capacity of organizations to design and implement equity-focused strategies that improve community health. This factsheet shares real examples of how the Cohort supports organizations across the country in tackling structural barriers and advancing racial justice and health equity.

In recognition of International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, 2025, Network attorneys and staff have identified seven policies with the potential to improve overdose prevention and advance the health of people who use drugs across the United States. This policy brief covers a wide range of areas, including well known, evidence-based harm reduction strategies and frameworks, as well as more novel policies that intersect climate change and drug policy. 

Knowledge of legal and policy tools that may be used to advance public health at the local level can increase the effectiveness of public health practitioners and community advocates in bringing about lasting systems change. This fact describes a number of legal and policy tools commonly used at the local level, together with one or more examples of how they might be used to advance public health and health equity.

Improving the social determinants of health, the conditions where people are born, live, work, and play is necessary to make progress towards health equity. Community power building can help pave the way to better health outcomes by targeting the underlying conditions that shape these outcomes. This policy brief discusses what community building is and focuses on local community power building opportunities, highlighting laws, local policies, organizations, and programs that may be leveraged by community groups in King County, Washington.

This special audio release for Mental Health Awareness Month explores the human impact of systemic failures across public health, mental health, and social support systems. Grounded in lived experience, the conversation surfaces how grief, addiction, and loss are too often met with stigma, institutional inaction, and a lack of coordinated care. It’s a reminder that public health is not just about systems and services—it’s about people, and the urgent need to center compassion and accountability in how those systems respond to crisis. Trigger warning: This episode includes sensitive topics around grief and addiction.

Join us for a webinar introducing the Network’s  Racial Equity Dataset. This searchable database includes bills proposed and enacted in the 2021 and 2022 legislative cycles in the wake of the renewed racial justice movement in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.   Features of the laws that were enacted, and that were still in effect on December 31, 2022, were compiled into a cohesive dataset, created using policy surveillance methods, to provide insight into the outcomes of those legislative sessions. Legislation identified, though not exhaustive, provides a bird’s eye view and a peek into relevant legal trends across the country.

The Network seeks to support local, state, and tribal governments, health departments, community-based groups or organizations, nonprofits, professional associations, health care systems and providers, and others in their efforts to eliminate deep, systemic, and racially driven inequities in public health. Join us for a webinar outlining our recently released Legal and Policy Assistance to Address Racial Health Equity call for applications (RHE CFA) to support work on racial health equity. We are seeking applicants developing or working on a specific issue that prioritizes racial equity that would benefit from legal and policy technical assistance. We can assist with work that is at any stage of development.

In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, Network attorneys and staff have identified six key policies with the potential to significantly improve mental health outcomes across the United States. This policy brief covers a wide range of areas focused on communities and those who work to support communities. It is designed as a practical resource for public health professionals, leaders, and partners, offering strategies to enhance mental health and well-being while reducing disparities in mental health care.

Many state and local governments have established offices of equity or similar entities to prioritize equity in government policies and procedures, and to lead and support equity work within the communities they serve. The first edition of this resource provided detailed examples of cities or counties across 12 states that established such offices. This 2024 Edition provides a non-exhaustive list of states, cities and counties across the country that have established such offices and includes some information on the offices found.

Law and policy play a critical role in shaping health outcomes especially when it comes to racial health equity. While legislative actions and trends matter, it is also important to understand the role of the courts in altering legal landscapes in ways that can positively or negatively impact racial health disparities. This fact sheet highlights four 2023 U.S. Supreme Court cases with examples of how each potentially impacts racial health equity. It also provides a further examination of two cases of the cases that can be classified as wins for racial health equity.

By May of 2020, the realities of the inequitable toll of COVID-19 on communities of color became starkly evident, and the murder of George Floyd sparked a renewed movement for racial justice in the United States. During this time, the Network began earnestly exploring how best to respond and be of assistance in a rapidly changing environment. An internal Health Equity Work Group (HEWG) was established to create a space for connection and learning, and to identify ways to collaborate across regions to be responsive to what we were observing and experiencing. One of the early actions identified by the HEWG was to “evaluate what services and supports Network users are interested in” via tools like an environmental scan, stakeholder interviews, and focus groups. This report explores the process that was undertaken to answer that question and the key findings and themes relevant to health and racial equity work across a variety of public health practitioners and organizations.

by Overview September 21, 2023 | 1 – 2:30 p.m. ETMedical debt is a social determinant of health affecting millions of people in…