Health equity is when everyone
has equal opportunity to live their healthiest lives.
But how do we get there?
One of the things
that we've seen across the country
is that there are populations
that have historically been disadvantaged.
And sometimes it's because of race and ethnicity.
Sometimes it's because of where they live
and how much money they make
or where they go to school.
So all those things
turn out to really contribute
to our health outcomes.
And that's what we call
the social determinants of health.
I think it's our responsibility
to understand those disparities
and to really support
communities and remediation of those challenges.
At the CDC,
we have multiple roles
that we can play as a government agency.
We're currently funding
a variety of social determinant action plans,
and these are geared towards communities
pulling together at the state, local,
territorial and tribal level.
We're also working with a
whole variety of communities
to think about what works
and what they need to continue their success
in the area of social determinants.
We've actually identified 42 communities
that have successfully addressed
some of the social determinants of health
that we've been talking about,
and we're learning from them every single day.
We're now trying to understand more
about how the public health system
and these community coalitions
can actually work together,
because we think that is critically important.
I think public health needs
to be much more of a position of reaching out,
bridging these gaps and bringing people together.
A lot of this work
really needs to be done
in partnership with other sectors,
and those sectors
could be transportation, health care,
it could be economic development.
It's going to take all aspects of our society
to really move towards a world
where everyone has that kind of equal access.
Please join us so that everyone can
live their healthiest lives.