July 5, 2016

The Long Road Home: Decreasing Barriers to Public Housing for People with Criminal Records

| By Afomeia Tesfai | For individuals with a criminal history, finding affordable and stable housing becomes extremely difficult in a place like the Bay Area, with high cost and limited supply. People with a criminal history can legally be excluded from housing. In a survey from the 2015 Ella Baker […]
June 23, 2016

Addressing Race & Power to Advance Health Equity: An Infographic

| By Dawn Haney | As HIP works with more community partners and public health departments to advance health equity, we’re looking for new ways to talk with folks about what we mean by equity. This Equity Infographic contains user-friendly, visual content to share with organizations or individuals who may be less […]
May 6, 2016

Together we are Stronger: Intersectionality of Immigration and Incarceration

| By Fabiola Santiago | Last week the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society launched We Too Belong: A Resource Guide of Inclusive Practices in Immigration and Incarceration Law and Policy at a half-day event that brought together the contributors to share their stories, their work, and engage […]
March 28, 2016

Strategic Questions to Ask To Explicitly Address Racism and Power in Your Public Health Practice

| By Jonathan Heller | A few months ago, I wrote about the need for public health practitioners who want to advance equity to explicitly address race and power in their work. I received positive feedback, but also found that people are interested in how to actually do this. I […]
March 13, 2016

How Payday Loan Reforms can Improve Health for the Most Vulnerable Minnesotans

| By Fabiola Santiago | “Every two weeks I was just paying interest. And I think I got frustrated with it because knowing that the interest you’re paying really isn’t even close to what you took, and by the time you know it, you paid more than what you took […]
February 6, 2016

Our Politics are Killing Us

| By Rajiv Bhatia | Today’s blog post is written by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, a physician, health scientist, Principal of The Civic Engine, and co-founder of HIP. The post was first published on December 18, 2015 by Medium.  Doctors train to find the diseases behind the symptoms and signs. But, […]
January 8, 2016

If we want to advance equity in public health practice, we must address race and power

| By Jonathan Heller | This week’s blog post was originally posted on The Pump Handle on January 7, 2016. Most public health practitioners, and those who work on health impact assessment specifically, want to improve the health of vulnerable populations. Most efforts to do so are well-intentioned, yet they […]
December 10, 2015

Report-back from National Public Health and Criminal Justice Convening

| By Lili Farhang | On November 9, Human Impact Partners and the Vera Institute of Justice co-convened over 40 criminal justice advocates and public health practitioners from around the country at a groundbreaking, first of its kind convening. The event grew out of the idea that health and justice […]
December 8, 2015

Stress on the Streets (SOS): Race, Policing, Health, and Increasing Trust, not Trauma in Ohio

| By Sara Satinsky | Today, Human Impact Partners released a report that examines a critical perspective undervalued in current conversations about policing: the health perspective. Shocking cases of mistreatment, injury, and death grab headlines and go viral on social media; this report fills in the less often discussed mental, […]
November 30, 2015

Ensuring Development in South LA is Equitable, Sustainable, and Community-Led

| By Ramya Sivasubramanian | Today’s blog post is written by Ramya Sivasubramanian, a Staff Attorney at Environmental Justice in Santa Monica, California. The post was first published on November 30, 2015 by Switchboard, the Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog.  “Development is not for us, unless it is led […]
October 26, 2015

Assessing Health and Equity Impacts of the Proposed Reef Development Project in South Central Los Angeles

| By Lili Farhang | Today, Human Impact Partners, Esperanza Community Housing, Strategic Action for a Just Economy and other members of the UNIDAD Coalition are releasing the executive summary of the report Assessing Health and Equity Impacts of the Proposed Reef Development Project in South Central Los Angeles. Our […]
October 22, 2015

Development in South LA: A Threat or an Opportunity?

| By Cynthia Strathmann | Today’s guest blog is by SAJE Executive Director, Cynthia Strathmann, PhD. In this blog, she writes about the ripple effects of development in South LA and opportunities for change. It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that Los Angeles is in the […]
October 13, 2015

Building Hope with Community: The Right to Affordable Housing in South Central Los Angeles

This week’s blog is a repost from Esperanza Community Housing. The post discusses the right to affordable housing in South Central Los Angeles and preliminary findings from HIP’s HIA on a development in the area. The narrative of South Los Angeles has been one of serial displacement. Community residents, primarily […]
October 7, 2015

Accommodating Trauma: Intended & Unintended Effects of an Unusual Legal Strategy

| By Dawn Haney | A group of high school students and teachers in Compton, California are taking their school district to court, claiming their schools are legally required to accommodate the ways that chronic poverty, abuse, and neglect affect their learning. Surprisingly, they are using special education law in […]
September 29, 2015

Dignified & Just Policing: Gang Injunctions and Other Policing Practices Have Uncertain Impacts on Community Safety and Health

| By Darío Maciel | Today, HIP and Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities (SABHC) released a report on the health and equity impacts of a gang injunction in the Townsend-Raitt neighborhood of Santa Ana, California. A gang injunction is a controversial policing practice that essentially acts as a group restraining […]
September 21, 2015

Is Discrimination Going Unexamined at the EPA?

| By Celia Harris | The Environmental Protection Agency has an Office of Civil Rights, designed to ensure that agencies receiving EPA funding not discriminate against certain groups of people. When I recently heard this, I was glad to think that the EPA was carefully protecting communities from discrimination. But […]
September 8, 2015

The Greater Health Impacts of the Affordable Care Act

| By Marnie Purciel-Hill | My son had an accident and broke his leg and I found a lump for which a routine biopsy was needed. When these things happened to my family, I was relieved I had health insurance to help meet our medical needs. But it’s been an […]
August 27, 2015

Climate Action is Health Action: Why Support for California Climate Legislation is Good for Our Health

This week’s blog was originally published by the Public Health Institute (PHI) on August 25, 2015.  “Amid a historic drought that has been linked to climate change, California’s state legislature is currently considering bills that aim to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. Often considered a bellwether in […]
August 20, 2015

Fair Housing for Better Health

| By Logan Harris | One year after Michael Brown was killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, galvanizing the Black Lives Matter movement, the role of housing segregation in perpetuating racial injustice is in the news. Residential segregation is one of the major mechanisms that produce racial […]
July 24, 2015

Education: the Key to Health and Success for Foster Youth

| By Carlene Ervin | This week’s post is written by HIP’s Social Media, Research, and Data Collection Summer Intern, Carlene Ervin. She is a sophomore at Yale University and a resident of Oakland, CA.  Since I was five, my foster mom told me I would go to college. She […]
July 9, 2015

A Tale of Two Policies

| By Kim Gilhuly | Last week in Massachusetts saw the release of recommendations from Gov. Charlie Baker’s task force on the epidemics of addiction to and death from opium-derived narcotics prescription drugs. The Massachusetts plan includes welcome public health solutions: 100 new beds for people addicted; increased use of […]
June 1, 2015

What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

| By Rachel Davis | This week’s blog is a repost by Rachel Davis of Prevention Institute. She links efforts to prevent injury and death due to violence to many of the policy issues that we research at HIP, including incarceration, economic security, education, and housing policy. The article was […]
May 14, 2015

Helping Communities Break The Cycle And Regain Their Power

| By Ronald Day | Today’s guest blog post is by Ronald Day, Associate Vice President of the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy (DRCPP), The Fortune Society. It was originally published by fortunesociety.org.  I dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. A substantial number of teenagers in my […]
May 12, 2015

Turning on the TAP: How Returning Access to Tuition Assistance for Incarcerated People Improves the Health of New Yorkers

| By Lili Farhang | Today, Human Impact Partners, the Education from the Inside Out Coalition, and our partners are excited to release a report that examines an often-overlooked aspect of providing college education for people in prison. Turning on the TAP: How Returning Access to Tuition Assistance for Incarcerated […]
May 11, 2015

Public Health and Criminal Justice: Shared Root Causes

| By Jasmine D. Graves | Today’s guest blog is by Jasmine D. Graves MPH, Special Assistant, Office of the Commissioner, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene As the public health community focuses on the root causes of ill health and inequities, there is a growing recognition […]
May 8, 2015

College Education in Prison: Why it’s a Smart Choice for Everyone

| By Marsha Weissman | Today’s guest blog post is written by by Marsha Weissman, Executive Director of Center for Community Alternatives and Sandy Lane, Professor of Public Health and Anthropology, Syracuse University “In 1994, college education programs flourished in New York State – there were 23 colleges awarding degrees […]
May 4, 2015

Good Jobs For All Would Boost Health, Reduce Inequities

| By Jonathan Heller | Last week several national organizations launched the Putting Families First: Good Jobs For All campaign to bring the issues of jobs, poverty, and inequality to the center of the national debate. “Today, our country is more aware than ever before that our entire economic system is […]
May 1, 2015

Education is a human right: Opportunity to follow international law

| By Fred Patrick | Today’s guest blog post is written by Fred Patrick, Director on Center on Sentencing and Corrections, Vera Institute of Justice. International laws declare education to be an inherent human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economics, Social and Cultural […]
April 17, 2015

Saving New Yorkers Money by Turning on the TAP for Learning

| By Soffiyah Elijah | Today’s guest blog post is written by Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York.  Currently, there is a ban in New York State on incarcerated people receiving financial assistance from the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) to pursue higher education while in […]
March 30, 2015

Was “Race Together” Wrong?

| By Sara Satinsky | Starbucks’ short-lived “Race Together” campaign, in which baristas wrote the phrase on coffee cups, generated lots of conversations – and lots of controversy. Was it a good idea, but poorly implemented? Did it succeed, however slightly, in nudging the nation to talk about racism? Or […]