Gather Learnings and Share Insights

How public health departments can learn from and share the successes and challenges of implementing their health equity strategies

Public health departments need to continually learn from the successes and challenges of their equity efforts, and use these lessons to adapt their strategies for greater impact. It’s important to use formal evaluation processes that include and value both quantitative and qualitative methods. This mixed methods approach ensures that health departments will have robust and reliable data on whether, why, and how their health equity strategies are having a positive impact on their goals. Evaluating impact and learning from process also comes from discussing lessons learned with staff internally and gathering stories from community members and partners about their experiences. This comprehensive and iterative evaluation process supports stronger, more sustainable health equity and racial justice strategies.

Once health departments have gathered these lessons, it’s important to share learnings and insights with staff, partners, and the community through a variety of media, such as meetings and forums, newsletters, press releases, and conferences. Additionally, it is important to celebrate successes and wins together with staff and community. These recognitions of progress and contributions can help strengthen organizational culture, energize and motivate staff and partners, and foster deeper connections and trust.

Action steps health departments can take to gather learnings and share insights about their health equity and racial justice work:

• Create an evaluation and measurement plan with staff that describes how you will collect data, what data collection tools you will use to monitor your progress and share your impact, and how you intend to use the data for improvement and decision-making
• Conduct focus groups, group interviews, or one-on-one interviews with partners and community members to collect and document success stories; share success stories, anonymously with consent, on your organization’s website
• Gather and document lessons learned through regular check-ins with staff during internal meetings and/or host an after-action-review (AAR) for staff to reflect on what happened with the strategy in an effort to learn, improve, and plan for the future
• Celebrate all wins at internal staff, team, and/or department meetings, no matter how big or small
• Spotlight your efforts in your organization’s newsletter and other communication and at external meetings and conferences — share successes and how the organization is working to overcome the challenge, to inspire and support others in their health equity and racial justice work