Plant

The second stage is Plant.

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Now that your soil is prepped, it’s time to plant your seeds, i.e., select and implement equity strategies.

Choosing a diverse set of mutually beneficial strategies will create the healthiest, most effective equity garden. It’s also up to you, as the gardener, to know what will grow best in your soil and select strategies that will be robust and adaptive to your internal and external environments and political climate.

Once you’ve begun implementing your strategies, you will want to continue caring for them as they grow and develop. This is challenging and intensive work. Along the way, you’ll need to deepen and sustain community relationships and partnerships and build community and government alliances. Caring for your growing strategies includes returning to the foundation and checking your soil/internal environment. Regularly returning to the foundational elements of your equity practice will help ensure your strategies have what they need to continue to thrive as they mature.

Plant Stage

Strategic Practices

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Build Narrative Power

Create and advance transformative narratives that shape a more equitable vision of what is possible.

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Mobilize Data and Research

Mobilize data and research in partnership with communities to build community power and advance equitable policies.

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Change Internal Policies and Practices

Change internal policies and practices, and align processes to center and embed health equity and racial justice across the organization.

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Pursue Policy Changes that Transform the Root Causes

Actively pursue policy changes that address the root cause of health inequities.

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Build Strategic Partnerships

Leverage relationships across government and foster accountable relationships with the community.

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Support Community Power-Building

Leverage governmental power to provide tangible support for community power-building organizations and campaigns.