CDC CORE HEALTH EQUITY SCIENCE AND INTERVENTION STRATEGY

Health equity is when everyone has the opportunity to be as healthy as possible. To achieve health equity, multi-sectoral efforts are needed to address the severe and far-reaching health disparities that plague our nation by expanding access and removing the social and economic obstacles that lead to poor health outcomes. These barriers include poverty, poor housing, and unsafe or unhealthy environments, as well as lack of access to good jobs, quality education, and comprehensive, high quality health care.

Driven by structural racism, discrimination, stigma, and longstanding disenfranchisement, these obstacles overwhelmingly impact communities that are underserved, including communities of color, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, people who are incarcerated or without homes, and those who live in rural or frontier settings.

These inequities do not just affect those groups that are hardest hit. They affect us all. The COVID-19 pandemic is the most recent and glaring example. By diminishing the economic, health, educational, and overall human potential of millions of people in this country, health inequities and disparities weaken our entire society and leave us unprepared for public health threats.

As an agency, CDC is transforming its public health research, surveillance, and implementation science efforts to shift from simply listing the markers of health inequities to identifying and addressing the drivers of these disparities.

CDC’s CORE Health Equity Science and Intervention Strategy is designed to work in collaboration and lock step with multi-sectoral partners to transform our work at its very core and strengthen our ability to keep our nation safe and healthy – today and in the future.

This new strategy challenges our CDC centers to incorporate health equity and efforts to address health disparities as a foundational element across all our work – from science and research to programs, and from partnerships to workforce.

Through the CORE strategy, CDC is integrating health equity into the fabric of our work at all levels. Each division has submitted health equity action plans that are being incorporated into a broad, unified agency-wide strategy. The division action plans include:

• Goals and associated targets
• Concrete milestones for the next 6-12 months
• Indicators to monitor progress
• Key partnerships

To ensure an effective health equity strategy for our nation, CDC is committed to bringing together partners from various sectors to gain collective expertise and perspectives, inform next steps, and create a shared commitment to reduce health inequities. Only through a combination of strong science, interventions, evaluation, partnership, policy, communication, and workforce enhancement can we achieve our vision of ensuring all people have an opportunity to live as healthy as possible.