This issue brief describes the economic benefits of creating healthy environments for all—both through targeted strategies that improve the quality of neighborhood environments where low-income people of color live and work, and through larger-scale shifts toward a clean energy economy that does not rely on fossil fuels.

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This issue brief describes how ensuring access to high-quality, affordable health care for all can benefit families, communities, and the economy.

This report explores and provides examples of how key changes to components of the financial, education, justice, health, and tax systems can strengthen—rather than undermine—households’ financial security, and increase economic inclusion.

It describes innovative approaches that integrate a focus on building financial security across programs, while reforming the systems that most affect the balance sheets of lower-income families and families of color. The featured approaches run the gamut from small local programs to state and federal policy reforms and initiatives. These innovations and the changes that they represent to key systems may be adapted and expanded to strengthen the financial security of vulnerable people and communities nationwide.

Equity advocacy efforts require a great deal of preparation before a campaign for equity can be undertaken. (2014)

Opportunities to advance equity abound in the numerous activities associated with different advocacy efforts. (2014)

Changing the challenging conditions that affect low-income people and communities of color requires a “grassroots to treetops” approach that connects the experiences of people on the ground with the decisions about policies that shape communities. (2014)

Equity advocacy does not — and should not — cease when a favorable policy outcome is first reached. In fact, it is through the continued effort of equity advocates, champions, and their allies that policy changes to promote equity are implemented and embedded into practice.

Equity advocates know the power of policy. Policy determines the rules by which opportunities are framed and delivered — what is allowed, encouraged, discouraged, and prohibited. Advocacy — the art of influence and persuasion — is essential for fostering the creation, adoption, and implementation of promising policy solutions that catalyze social change. (2014)

This brief introduces strategies for planning for health equity at a regional scale and summarizes the movement for building healthy communities. It draws from the experiences of regional equity coalitions and metropolitan planning organizations to identify five important conditions that must be met to achieve effective results.

Achieving equitable growth in cities and regions will require a new set of tools, innovative leveraging of resources, and unprecedented levels of collaboration. This report draws from the work already underway in more than 40 cities and regions to connect low-income people and communities of color to the economic mainstream. It lifts up strategies concentrated in seven areas, all helping communities to plan for equitable growth, remove employment barriers, grow good jobs, and strengthen the education pipeline.