Public health is one of the most important policy and service delivery mechanisms for addressing health inequities. The Sudbury and District Health Unit has long played a leadership role in realizing this potential to advance health equity. They undertook innovative research to determine how public health can address systemic health inequities and identified ten promising practices in a comprehensive report. They have just released a series of fact sheets on the ten promising practices:
- Targeting with universalism
- Purposeful reporting
- Social Marketing
- Health equity target setting
- Equity-focused health impact assessment
- Competencies/organizational standards
- Contribution to the evidence base
- Early childhood development
- Community engagement
- Intersectoral action
Sudbury has also developed an ambitious ten year plan on how to integrate equity into all their activities and developed interesting media and communications material designed to popularize the importance of social determinants of health and shift conversations away from focusing solely on acute care and treating illness to building the social, economic and community conditions needed to promote good health for all.