Stylized illustration of a green and yellow cityscape with a variety of buildings including skyscrapers and a suspension bridge. The scene is depicted with a textured, hand-drawn look, and above the city, fluffy blue clouds float against a light background, giving a vibrant and optimistic atmosphere to the urban setting.

Health Equity Guide

Your guide to growing a flourishing garden of health equity strategies.

The Health Equity Guide is a comprehensive resource for public health departments and practitioners to plan and implement health equity and racial justice work. It offers 15 strategic practices, organized using a cyclical gardening framework, to illustrate how each mutually supports health equity goals.

Join us in the garden

Gardeners cultivating the soil with cityscape in the background

Cultivate

Harvest

Plant

Imagine you are a gardener looking to grow health equity practices that will make just and equitable impacts in your community. To do so, you will need to cultivate a supportive environment for your strategies to flourish; plant strategies that grow well together and reflect community priorities; and harvest the impacts and lessons learned once your strategies bear fruit.

Colorful scene of a person in a purple shirt and orange hat pushing a wheelbarrow in a farmyard, surrounded by chickens pecking at the ground. The scene is lively with grass, a butterfly, and a vibrant outdoor setting.

STAGE 1

Cultivate

Prepare your soil and gather the nutrients you need to begin your garden. Develop a supportive container and environment — with the necessary resources, leadership, and analysis — for your health equity strategies.

Illustration of a person in a wide-brimmed hat kneeling and tending to a vegetable garden patch. The garden highlights green leafy plants in the soil.

Illustration of a vibrant urban farming scene with people engaged in various gardening activities. The background features modern buildings, including skyscrapers and bridges. The garden is lush and organized into neat rows, with individuals of diverse ages and ethnicities tending to plants.

STAGE 2

Plant

Select, plant, and care for your growing seeds. Choose and implement a variety of mutually beneficial strategies that you will care for as they grow and advance your health equity and racial justice goals.

Illustration of a bustling outdoor market scene where vendors are selling fresh produce from colorful stands to customers.

Colorful illustration of a bustling outdoor market adjacent to a park. The scene includes stalls overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables, vendors interacting with a diverse group of customers, and people enjoying meals at picnic tables. A large tree provides shade to the area, and buildings, mountains and trees can be seen in the distance.

STAGE 3

Harvest

Harvest, enjoy, and share your fruit; prune and compost your plants for the next growing season. Celebrate your wins and learn from your successes and challenges before returning to the beginning of this cycle to further develop your health equity practice.

This work is collective, and should not be done alone or in silos. Relationships —internally, with the community, and across government— are foundational to developing equitable practices that center humanity, access, and a sense of belonging.

Learn more about the Health Equity Guide

What’s New?

The new and improved HealthEquityGuide.org includes updated strategic practices mapped onto a cyclical gardening framework that is drawn from a Companion Planting Allegory. The new framework illuminates the importance of cultivating, implementing, and sustaining equitable and just public health practice.

Explore the allegory