This Year’s Challenge Theme is Advancing Health Equity

A commonly accepted definition of health equity is that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. To achieve this, according to the American Public Health Association, we value all people equally and we optimize the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, learn and age. We must also remove the obstacles to health.

Advancing health equity requires attention to the conditions that affect people’s everyday lives. This includes basic needs like housing, transportation, healthy food and education. We can also advance health equity by focusing on communities and our built and natural environments. The policies we follow at work, in hospitals and in schools also influence health equity. In this year’s competition, we are interested in maneuvering health equity from the micro to the macro levels. Innovative solutions to the problems created by health inequity holds promise to improve the health outcomes across populations.

We are particularly interested in solutions that promote health equity and address the differences in health status that exist by race/ethnicity, class, and geography. Specifically, we are looking for solutions that impact people and communities in New York City, the Long Island Region and the Hudson Valley Region.

We have created a self-paced webinar to review key concepts of our theme, discuss its importance to the Challenge, and answer questions on how to incorporate it into the required activities associated with being in the Challenge. Viewing this webinar is the first step in the application process.