In this video series, PHI’s Build Healthy Places Network features quick, deep dives with experts from the community development, health, and finance sectors. Lessons from the Field: Centering Community Voice uplifts practices that support community engagement processes and projects that are community-led and owned. Learn from practitioners from across sectors, who together are working to make neighborhoods healthier by centering the voices of residents.

Video Snapshots:

Snapshot 4: How the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule can advance racial and health equity

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule was published in 2015 requiring housing authorities, local, and state governments to advance housing equity and create more opportunities for disinvested neighborhoods. In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the new proposed AFFH rule in which participants must take meaningful steps to address housing discrimination and engage community members in decision-making processes that will help communities achieve housing equity and improve their health and well-being.

In the first interview, Build Healthy Places Network’s Co-Executive Director Colleen Flynn speaks with Will Dominie, the Housing Justice Program Director from Human Impact Partners, a national non-profit that transforms the field of public health to center equity and build collective power with social justice movements.

During their discussion, Will shares why his organization is prioritizing the proposed changes to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. He also highlights the discriminatory practices and inequitable opportunities that BIPOC communities experience and how these changes can uplift community voices and increase self-determination to address inequities and create healthier futures.

In the second interview, Rasheedah Phillips, the Director of Housing from PolicyLink, a national research and action institute dedicated to advancing economic and social equity, shares the history of the AFFH rule and why access to fair and affordable housing advances racial equity. Rasheedah and Colleen discuss how the new proposed rule will allow community members to advocate for policies in their communities that will help them achieve a fair and just opportunity for health.

Snapshot 3: Earning a Community’s Trust: A prerequisite for equitable community partnerships

The 10 Principles of Trustworthiness, created by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), integrates local perspectives with established precepts of community engagement to guide healthcare, public health, and other sectors such as community development as they work to demonstrate they are worthy of trust.

In this video snapshot, Build Healthy Places Network’s Co-Executive Director, Ruth Thomas-Squance, PhD, MPH, speaks with Philip M. Alberti, PhD, Founding Executive Director of AAMC. The two discuss the origins of the Principles for Trustworthiness, why the process is as important as the product, and how the tool applies to multi-sector efforts committed to long term relationships, where resources are shared and decisions are made collectively.

Snapshot 2: Building Resident-led Solutions for Fresh Food Access: Centering Community Voice in Cross-sector Partnerships

In this 13 minute interview, Build Healthy Places Network speaks with Diane Moss, the Managing Director of Project New Village (PNV), an organization improving fresh food access in Southeastern San Diego through resident-led, community rooted experiences that stimulate collective investments in social determinants of health. PNV was also a part of BHPN’s first Community Innovations cohort.

During this discussion, Diane Moss describes PNV’s Growers Network and Mobile Farmers Market role in creating more equitable food access in San Diego. She also provides some insights into the centering community voice while working with partners like large healthcare organizations to address food insecurity.

Snapshot 1: Lessons from the Field: Centering Community Voice

To launch the series, Build Healthy Places Network’s Co-Executive Directors Ruth Thomas-Squance and Colleen Flynn share the impetus to create this new series, including the organization’s priority to center racial equity in community investments. The two discuss how community-led approaches where residents can identify, co-create, and have an ownership stake in the solutions, can help shift community power and provide an opening to address and repair the damage of structural racism.

In December 2022, over 400 leaders across 42 states convened for PHI and partners’ 4th annual National Overdose Prevention Leadership Summit (NOPLS) to discuss topics addressing the opioid crisis in the United States, including learning from youth and people with lived experiences.

In these videos from the 2022 National Overdose Prevention Leadership Summit, hear how public health leaders are working to address the youth opioid crisis.

Hearing from Youth: The Spectrum of Risk

Young people encounter a wide range of risks as they navigate the pressures and social stimuli associated with increasing independence. In addition to known risks related to ongoing substance use during the teenage years, the rise of fentanyl-laced illicit pharmaceuticals is driving a rise in youth overdose among young people during their first or early encounters with drugs. This panel was focused on sharing experiences from youth in the field and helped identify conditions and behaviors that create risk for youth. They also explored ways to promote life-saving youth engagement in programs and services.

Communities Engage Youth and Get Results by Taking Action

Empower Watsonville is a community of passionate youth who support each other and build each other up. Participants learned about how Empower Watsonville formed their coalition and how they engaged youth leaders. Crystal Gonzalez and Sofia Cuentas shared reflections on Empower Watsonville’s lessons learned about how to be effective as a coalition.

In the fall of 2022, the PHI’s Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) held two webinars in its popular state telehealth policy series that focused on what the telehealth policy landscape may look like in a post-public health emergency environment. Rather than focus on individual states’ policies as examples, the two webinars explored issues that have more of a regional or national impact.

VIEW & DOWNLOAD THE WEBINAR SERIES SUMMARY REPORT

Webinar #1: Crossing State Lines – October 21, 2022

Speakers for the Crossing State Lines webinar focused on the myriad of policy considerations providers would need to consider when treating patients in another state. The expert panel included:

• Kimberly Horvath, JD, Senior Attorney, American Medical Association
• Jeremy Sherer, Esq, Partner, Digital Health Co-Chair, Hooper, Lundy, & Bookman, PC
• Kathy Wibberly, PhD, Director, Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center

Such issues like licensure are commonly known, but speakers also delved into issues around reimbursement, prescribing, malpractice insurance and consent. Due to the differences among states, providers will need to be aware that policies that are familiar within their own state are not necessarily replicated in other jurisdictions.

Webinar #2: Federal Policy & Telehealth: What to be Aware of Going Forward – October 28, 2022

For the second webinar, panelists focused on what could be expected in a post public health emergency (PHE) environment. (Please note that since the webinar took place, some changes to federal policy have occurred. Check CCHP’s website for more information). Additionally, panelists also focused on issues that policymakers have also been examining recently including concerns over waste, fraud and abuse as well as situations or conditions where telehealth can be utilized appropriately and where it cannot.

John W. Gordon, Office of Evaluation and Inspections from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) spoke about several reports recently published by the agency who has, among other items, been examining the waste, fraud and abuse issues. Carly L. Paterson, PhD, MPH, RN, Associate Director, Healthcare Delivery and Disparities Research Program, from Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) discussed some of the research that organization has been involved in. Overall, all panelist noted that there is still much to be examined and that it is highly likely future changes in policy will impact the direction on some of this additional research as well as how providers continue to use telehealth.

In Fall 2022, PHI’s Public Health Alliance of Southern California and PHI’s Center for Wellness and Nutrition hosted a four-part webinar series exploring the connections between data and equity. Watch the webinar recordings and find related resources:

• Session 1: A Race and Place Approach to Advancing Health Equity and Racial Justice
• Session 2: Best Practices in Transforming Data into Policy Actions for Health Equity and Racial Justice
• Session 3: Decolonizing Data Practices through Indigenous Evaluation Approaches
• Session 4: Data and Health Equity: Using Open-Source Data and Mapping to Understand Rural Community and Special Population Needs

Session 1: A Race and Place Approach to Advancing Health Equity and Racial Justice

The Public Health Alliance of Southern California focuses on the benefits of taking a race and place approach to examining health inequities. Using both race and place to address the impact of structural racism on health outcomes is critically important and is firmly supported by the data. The webinar also covers why examining both race and place are critical for promoting health equity.

View the Recording | Slides English (PDF) | Slides Spanish (PDF) | Q&A Fact Sheet (PDF)

Session 2: Best Practices in Transforming Data into Policy Actions for Health Equity and Racial Justice

The Healthy Places Index (HPI) is powerful data, mapping and policy platform created by PHI’s Public Health Alliance Southern California, designed to identify opportunities to improve neighborhood health and help guide investments, programs, and policy changes to where they will have the strongest impact on life expectancy. These policies are applicable in localities and states around the country. Join PHI’s Center for Wellness and Nutrition and our Public Health Alliance Southern California to learn how to use the HPI to find policies and best practices to reduce health inequities in your community.

View the Recording | Slides English (PDF) | Slides Spanish (PDF) | Q&A Fact Sheet (PDF)

Session 3: Decolonizing Data Practices through Indigenous Evaluation Approaches

This Webinar focuses on the needs and benefits of Decolonizing Evaluation practices within public health organizations and introduces Indigenous Data Sovereignty as the right of Indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership, and application of data about their communities, peoples, lands, and resources. This training highlights organizational policies and practices that can be adopted to support evaluation strategies rooted in racial equity, as well as approaches to authentically engage and collaborate with Indigenous populations to support their control over how public health data and knowledge will be generated, analyzed, documented, and disseminated.

View the Recording | Slides English (PDF) | Q&A Fact Sheet (PDF)

Session 4: Data and Health Equity: Using Open-Source Data and Mapping to Understand Rural Community and Special Population Needs

This webinar describes barriers and proposed solutions for using data in addressing health inequities in rural populations. The Northwest Center for Public Health Practice has developed a dashboard to make relevant data readily available, supported by training modules focusing on using data to achieve rural health equity. This training introduces the modules and opportunities for further learning and provides examples for how data can be used to understand rural health inequities and how to address them.

View the Recording | Slides English (PDF) | Slides Spanish (PDF) | Q&A Fact Sheet (PDF)

This project was supported by funds made available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support, through cooperative agreement OT18-1802, Strengthening Public Health Systems and Services Through National Partnerships to Improve and Protect the Nation’s Health award #6 NU38OT000303-04-02. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government. 

PHI’s CA Bridge is transforming addiction treatment by ensuring that every hospital in California provides 24/7 access to evidence-based care, treating substance use disorder like any other life-threatening condition.

Explore CA Bridge’s video library to find recorded trainings and resources to help emergency departments (EDs) and hospitals increase access to Medication for Addiction Treatment (MAT).

The videos are designed for clinicians and substance use navigators (SUNs), and cover clinical treatment; navigation to care; and culture of harm reduction. Search dozens of videos by topic, implementation level or your professional designation. Explore and review past training sessions to expand and deepen your knowledge, including:

• “But we don’t have an opioid problem”: Breaking Down Barriers and Finding Buy-in Where There Is None
• Culture of Care: Saving Lives Through Substance Use Disorder Treatment
• The Nuts and Bolts of Rapid MAT via Telehealth
• Stigma and Inequity in OUD Care
• Trauma-Informed Care for Navigators
• Connecting Patients to On-Going Care

Climate change is a global public health crisis. To help communities prepare, public health experts are working alongside local leaders to find new and creative ways to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.

In this episode of Healthy Living Healthy Planet Radio, host Bernice Butler speaks with Sam Calisch with Rewiring America; Debbie Ley with the Energy and Natural Resources Unit of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; and Dr. Linda Rudolph, program director of PHI’s Center for Climate Change and Health. Dr. Rudolph shares insights on how climate change is already creating a negative environment and health impacts—especially for our most vulnerable populations including seniors, children, pregnant women, communities of color, farmworkers and low-income communities.

Listen to the full podcast or watch the YouTube recording below to learn more about how public health leaders are working to find climate solutions that promote health and health equity.

Also available on Spotify, Google Play, Anchor, Radio Public, Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Monkeypox is now an international, national, and state public health emergency, made worse by an exhausted health workforce fighting stigma and misinformation, inequities in testing and care and inadequate public health funding. In order to stop the spread, we need strong partnerships—at the community level and with the private sector—especially in building trust. Innovation in surveillance and treatment are also essential.

In August 2022, the Bay Area Global Health Alliance and UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences hosted a webinar featuring public health experts to discuss the crisis, moderated by PHI President and CEO Dr. Mary A. Pittman.

Webinar Highlights

“There are inequities in treatment, vaccines, communication, and contact tracing,” said Peter Chin-Hong, UCSF Professor of Medicine. “There are lots of challenges in equity, in terms of who is getting tested. To ask for an Mpox test, you have to say essentially ‘I’ve had multiple sex partners, I’m open with my sexuality’, and that may be limiting who is going to get a PCR test.”

“What we are experiencing here at PRC, not only at the community level with our clients, but with many of our staff, is heightened trauma and PTSD. There’s heightened suspicion among and throughout the community, great amounts of fear, often that is because of the lack of knowledge and understanding,” said Brett Andrews, Positive Resource Center (PRC) CEO.

Stigma and a lack of trust are two reasons why community wastewater surveillance is an innovative approach to detect infectious disease and inform response, said Michele Barry, Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health Director and Alliance board member. “It gives you the ability to evaluate community health with much less bias if people are stigmatized and don’t go in for individual testing. Case identification may be difficult when you don’t see an obvious rash,” said Barry. (Stanford-based initiative WastewaterSCAN monitors wastewater for COVID-19, monkeypox, and other infectious diseases to help guide public health responses.)

Multiple, simultaneous public health crises [monkeypox and COVID-19], coupled with a lack of public health resources, have caused overwhelming challenges, including a “bone tired” public health workforce, commented Sara Cody, Santa Clara County (SCC) Health Officer and Public Health Director.

“Public health budgets have shrunk and public health workforces have shrunk over the last 10 to 15 years,” continued Cody. “While there have been many investments in healthcare delivery, there not only have not been investments in public health, but there have been disinvestments in public health.” She emphasized that flexible and consistent public health funding is essential for building the optimal health system infrastructure.

In caring for the health and safety of a large, international workforce during public health crises, Huma Abbasi, Chevron’s Chief Medical Officer and Alliance board member, noted that key to Chevron’s approach was to address misinformation and stigma through tailoring communications, activating monitoring and surveillance, repurposing materials for efficiency, continually improving established processes, and establishing strong partnerships.

“In our journeys through HIV and COVID-19, we saw that partnerships were important and have always been important,” Huma Abbasi, Chevron’s Chief Medical Officer and Alliance board member explained. “Be proactive in engaging with the key stakeholders and the business partners.”

Clarissa Ospina-Norvell, San Francisco Community Health Center’s Medical Director, agreed that partnerships have been equally valuable on a local level.  “We are utilizing peer ambassadors to help educate the community and now collaborating with other service providers, and our immediate community in the Tenderloin, to bring the vaccines to them,” said Ospina-Norvell when speaking about how the San Francisco Community Health Center is addressing monkeypox.

May 2022 marked the first time that many monkeypox cases and clusters have been reported concurrently in non-endemic and endemic countries in widely disparate geographical areas. It is a global health challenge facing the Bay Area and beyond.

Speakers:

• George Rutherford – UCSF Professor, Epidemiology & Biostatistics; Director, Prevention and Public Health Group; Acting Director, IGHS

• Dr. Peter Chin-Hong – UCSF Professor of Medicine

• Sara Cody – Santa Clara County Health Officer and Public Health Director

• Michele Barry – BAGHA board member; Stanford Professor of Medicine; Director, CIGH of the Center for Innovation in Global Health and Senior Associate Dean for Global Health

• Brett Andrews – SF’s Positive Resource Center (PRC) CEO

• Clarissa Ospina-Norvell – SF Community Health Center’s medical director

• Huma Abbasi – Chevron’s Chief Medical Officer and BAGHA board member

• Mike Steinberg – Chevron’s Team Lead of Global Public Health and Special Projects

Moderator:

• Mary Pittman – Public Health Institute’s CEO and BAGHA board chair

In the summer of 2022, PHI’s Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) held its fourth Medicaid and State Telehealth Policy Webinar series. While previous series have usually focused on Medicaid policy, the Summer Series took a different track by examining other telehealth policy issues that are in the jurisdiction or have a significant impact on state policy.

2022 Summer Series Webinar Topics

• Telehealth in School-Based Programs
• Telehealth and Licensure
• Private Payer Telehealth Laws
• Telehealth and Substance Use Disorders

Panelists included a wide-range of experts and policymakers including representatives from state Medicaid programs, federal, state, and local agencies, health plans, legislative representatives and patient advocates. Each speaker brought their unique perspective, knowledge and experience providing attendees a well-rounded discussion and background on each topics.

Watch the webinar recordings and see highlights (below), or download CCHP’s summary report of the entire series. 

Download the report

Medicaid & State Telehealth Policy: School-Based Telehealth

This webinar is a part of CCHP’s Medicaid and State Telehealth Policy webinar series and will focus on the use of telehealth to deliver services in a school-based program. Learn how Medicaid and Education departments work together to ensure children receive the services they need. See additional resources from the webinar.

Medicaid & State Telehealth Policy: State Licensure

Licensure has often been cited as a barrier to the use of telehealth. With the possibility of COVID waivers expiring, the exemptions given to licensing requirements are beginning to disappear. This webinar will focus in on what the post-PHE landscape will look like and what are some of the methods that are being utilized to address the licensure issue. See additional resources from the webinar.

Medicaid & State Telehealth Policy: Telehealth Private Payer Laws

The majority of states have passed laws impacting private health plans’ coverage of telehealth-delivered services. This webinar will focus on the path of these laws by looking at how one came into being with legislation, how a health plan implements and reaction to such a policy and does the entity that would enforce such a law have to say. See additional resources from the webinar.

Medicaid & State Telehealth Policy – Medicaid Telehealth Policy & Substance Use Disorder

In addition to COVID-19, the United States faced another public health crisis, the opioid epidemic. During COVID-19, some substance use disorder (SUD) patients found themselves cut off from care. Telehealth was used to help alleviate some of these access issues. In this webinar, we’ll hear about various approaches to the use of telehealth to treat SUD from federal, state and local perspectives. See additional resources from the webinar. 

What do Latino parents need to know about COVID and vaccines to help protect the health of their kids, families and communities? How can doctors and other medical providers communicate more effectively with the Latino community about the pandemic, vaccines and other health and safety measures?

In this video series, PHI’s Latino Coalition Against COVID-19 answers frequently asked questions about COVID vaccines in English and Spanish. It also includes recommendations and best practices for the medical community to reach Latino parents and families.

The videos feature:

• Dr. Ilan Shapiro, Chief Health Correspondent Medical Officer, Alta Med
• Dr. Eloisa Gonzalez, Director, Cardiovascular and School Health Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
• Dr. Daniel Turner-Lloveras, Executive Director, The Latino Coalition Against COVID-19
• Enriqueta Guido, LCAC19 Community Member
• María Guido, LCAC19 Community Member

Find FAQ videos in Español and English below, or watch the Youtube playlist to see the full series.

From flattening the curve to riding the waves, variants have shaped the entire pandemic and will shape our future. How does the world better prepare?

In the third episode of the Gates Foundation Working Dinner series, global health leaders Dr. Folake Olayinka, a fellow with PHI’s STAR program, and Dr. Samba Sow join Anita Zaidi and Keith Klugman to discuss how COVID-19 variants altered the trajectory of the pandemic and share their thoughts on how to better prepare for both future variants and the next pandemic—beginning at the community level.

Dr. Olayinka emphasizes that globally, no one is safe until we all are safe. We need vaccine and health systems and infrastructure to make sure vaccines are not only available and can be delivered into people’s arms; we need to ensure those systems and infrastructure are in place long term to help us fight the next pandemic.

More about PHI’s Sustaining Technical and Analytic Resources (STAR)

STAR is a five-year USAID-funded Fellowship project that improves the knowledge and skills of US and low-and-middle-income country (LMIC) professionals and institutions engaged in global health. STAR is in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco. Learn more.