Injury Center’s Focus on Health Equity
CDC’s Injury Center prioritizes health equity as a fundamental part of our injury and violence prevention work. Our focus is on building and sharing evidence that achieves health equity while also cultivating and strengthening partnerships to advance health equity.
Establish and strengthen internal mechanisms for implementing and evaluating how health equity is incorporated into Injury Center work
Prioritize health equity as part of Injury Center funding opportunities
Build and disseminate a broader evidence-base to advance health equity
Cultivate and strengthen reciprocal partnerships to achieve health equity
- Injury Prevention in American Indian and Alaska Native Communities
- The Injury Center partners with and supports native communities, federally recognized tribes, Tribal Epidemiology Centers, tribal organizations, and Indian Health Service to improve health and wellness.
- Promoting Health Equity in Response to Drug Overdose
- Health inequities can contribute to increased overdose deaths and other negative health outcomes, especially among groups that have been marginalized. Evidence-based tools and resources and the implementation of targeted prevention strategies that address key drivers of health inequities can help curb the overdose epidemic.
- Vital Signs: Drug Overdose Deaths Rise, Disparities Widen
- The growing drug overdose crisis, particularly among people from racial and ethnic minority groups, requires tailored prevention and treatment efforts. Comprehensive, community-based prevention and response efforts should incorporate proven, culturally responsive actions that address disparities in drug overdose deaths and the inequities that contribute to them.
- Vital Signs: Changes in Firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates
- Stopping firearm violence now and in the future requires a comprehensive prevention approach focused on reducing inequities. Strategies should address the underlying physical, social, economic, and structural conditions known to increase firearm homicide and suicide risks.
- MMWR: Suicides Among American Indian or Alaska Native Persons — National Violent Death Reporting System, United States, 2015–2020
- Suicide disproportionately affects American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons. Culturally relevant comprehensive public health approaches to suicide prevention are needed to address systemic and long-standing inequities among AI/AN persons.
- Publications
Health equity is the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. Achieving health equity requires focused and ongoing societal efforts to address historical and contemporary injustices; overcome economic, social, and other obstacles to health and healthcare; and eliminate preventable health 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.
CDC’s Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication emphasizes the importance of addressing all people inclusively and respectfully. These principles are intended to help public health professionals, particularly health communicators, within and outside of CDC ensure their communication products and strategies adapt to the specific cultural, linguistic, environmental, and historical situation of each population or audience of focus.
CDC’s Global Public Health Equity Guiding Principles for Communication adds a global perspective to CDC’s Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication. This resource also complements CDC’s Global Health Equity Strategy, which includes guiding principles for implementing health equity and promoting a sustained culture of equity and accountability.
CDC’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity (OMHHE) advances health equity and women’s health issues across the nation through CDC’s science and programs. OMHHE also increases CDC’s capacity to leverage its diverse workforce and engage stakeholders to this end.