Social determinants of Health

August 9, 2016

Expanding Access to Preschool Could Improve Health and Equity in Cincinnati, August, 2016

| By Holly Avey | One of my favorite things about doing HIAs and other projects at Human Impact Partners is the unexpected “Aha!” moments that occur, when we find something in the research that surprises us. Today, Human Impact Partners and our partners from The AMOS Project are excited […]
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 28, 2016

A Framework Connecting Criminal Justice and Public Health

UPDATE: Our Health Instead of Punishment Program has undergone some exciting updates since we published this blog post. We invite you to learn about our latest work over here. | By Jonathan Heller | HIP has been doing a lot of research about how criminal justice policies and practices affect health. […]
April 28, 2016

Dismantling the Bars on the Birdcage

| By Sara Satinsky | The recently released Coming of Age in the Other America by Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin asks the question: why do some kids in the poorest neighborhoods thrive and meet their potential despite overwhelming odds when others don’t? As summarized in an excellently […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
March 19, 2015

An Uncomfortable Truth – Our Failure to Address Racism

This blog article is a re-post of an open letter to the public from Dr. Muntu Davis, who is the Health Officer and Director for Alameda County Public Health Department in California. Dr. Davis offers the kind of public health leadership we love, linking common health issues with their social […]
February 19, 2015

Health – and Health Professionals – Must be Front and Center in Policy Debates

| By Jonathan Heller | This blog post was first published by the Detroit Wayne County Health Authority on Feb 9, 2015.  Too many babies are dying in Detroit – just as in my town, Oakland, California. Too many people are dying earlier than they should be. Heart disease rates […]
February 10, 2015

Compassion for Individuals or Working to Change the System?

| By Lili Farhang | Two recent stories about people’s generosity toward strangers moved me deeply – but also got me thinking about the gap between our willingness to help individuals and the need to address the roots of our society’s problems. In Detroit, the Free Press featured the determination […]