Alliance Supports California Communities in Addressing Health Inequities

PHI’s California Alliance of Academics and Communities for Public Health Equity (Alliance), a statewide network of 270 academic and community public health leaders, are strengthening their capacity to address health inequities through community-academic partnerships, research, education and advocacy efforts. The Alliance partners with community and academic leaders who are building a common policy agenda to:

• strengthen California’s public health workforce and infrastructure;
• confront violence as a public health crisis; 
• address the public health implications of climate change and environmental hazards; and 
• improve health access in historically excluded and marginalized communities.

In 2023, the Alliance launched three collaborative issue-based action groups bringing together academic and community experts to tackle key public health issues, learn from each other, and advance statewide solutions. Approximately 150 Alliance members participated in one or more of the following action groups: public health workforce, violence prevention, and environment and health. In 2024, the action groups accomplished the following community goals:

Advocating for Stronger Environmental Protections: Environment and Health action group members advocated for stronger environmental health protections and policies for communities throughout California who are impacted by oil and gas companies. As part of their advocacy and policy efforts, Alliance action group members worked closely with students in Coalinga and West Los Angeles to amplify videos capturing the student voices and communities who are negatively impacted by living near oil and gas wells. The videos were created to help educate voters, especially young people who have been leaders in addressing climate change.

Supporting Safer Communities: The Violence Prevention Action Group worked with the Schools and Programs of Public Health systems to assess how best to support safer campuses and reduce sexual assault and promoted their work through digital media. A few of the Violence Prevention Action Group members participated as experts in a 2024 podcast interview with PHI’s CA4Health to discuss the possible outcome of the United States v. Rahimi case which will determine whether the 2nd Amendment prevents Congress from prohibiting people subject to domestic violence protective orders from having firearms. In the interview, experts highlighted the public safety implications of the case.

Investing in the Public Health Workforce: The Public Health Workforce action group focused on building evidence-based Community Health Worker (CHW) policies and practices and advancing more state targeted investments in the public health workforce. Community Health Workers or Promotoras are trusted members from the communities they serve and have worked on the frontlines as public health workers for decades. CHWs provide critical resources to community members such as social, health, and economic support.

As a new PHI program, the director Dr. Michael Rodriguez, speaks to the importance of partnership as the Alliance continues to scale up their work to meet the needs of communities.