NCHHSTP Equity Initiative

The National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) developed an Equity Initiative to optimize synergies between the Center’s existing equity activities, and to support the identification of additional strategic opportunities to embed equity into the fabric of NCHHSTP’s workplace operations and public health programs.

The Equity Initiative includes an Implementation Plan that outlines the first steps of a long-term strategic process to place equity squarely at the forefront of all internal and external Center activities. The Plan is organized into three focus areas with goals, objectives, and activities to support achieving the goals:

• Ensuring a workplace culture that is inclusive, collaborative, and anti-racist, and one that encourages all staff to engage in dialogue about racism and other systems of oppression.
• Establishing workplace policies and procedures that further increase diversity, ensure fair and equitable opportunities for advancement, and eliminate discrimination.
• Refining our systems and processes for designing, funding, and evaluating research, policy, programs, and partnerships to ensure they are intentionally, systematically, and consistently focused on addressing the social and structural causes of health disparities.

This commitment to a long-term strategy for health equity is shared across CDC. In 2021 Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH Director, CDC, and Administrator, ATSDR declared racism a serious public health threat, and soon thereafter launched the CORE Health Equity Science and Intervention Strategy to integrate health equity into the fabric of all of the agency’s work. CDC is committed to ensuring that all people have the opportunity to have the best health possible.

NCHHSTP’s Commitment

NCHHSTP  is committed to health equity, which is achieved when all people have the opportunity to attain their full health potential, and no one is disadvantaged from attaining this potential because of their social position or other socially determined circumstances.^1,2 In keeping with this commitment, NCHHSTP seeks to maintain a staff work environment that is diverse, inclusive, and equitable, so that, together, NCHHSTP can eliminate disparities in health and in all of its determinants through public health programs. Read more about these efforts:

• NCHHSTP Strategic Plan through 2026
• Establishing a Holistic Framework to Reduce Inequities in HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STDs, and Tuberculosis in the United States