Equity and justice are not simply aspirational ideals — they are living commitments that we must actively apply to our daily decisions, relationships, and responsibilities. What is being asked of us as public health practitioners is often not easy, and there won’t always be a single “right” answer for every situation. But there are practices we can use to navigate complexity, enhance our work, and guide our thinking and actions over time.
The following are 10 specific ways we can advance equity and justice in our daily work. These practices are not a checklist or a step-by-step formula. They are ongoing, interrelated approaches that require reflection, courage, patience, and experimentation.
1. Learn your legacy and exercise your full latitude: Learn the legacy of your field, institution, and role. Build your knowledge about the harms and the hopes that got us where we are — so you can help chart a better future.
If we want to create meaningful change, we must first understand the contexts and forces that got us here. Learning our legacy means we must become knowledgeable about:
The histories of the communities we work in — including events that went undocumented by “official” records.
- Our organization’s relationship to the communities we serve.
- The lived experiences of community leaders, organizers, advocates, and residents.
- Recognizing and wrestling with our own positionality, considering how your organizational role and your own identities and lived experiences shape how you’re perceived and how you show up.
2. Lead with values: Let equity and justice guide your decisions. When values come first, impact follows.
Whether you are leading a project, program, a department, or an entire organization, your values provide a foundation for accountability and principled decision making. Start by identifying three to five core values. Define what they mean in practice so that you can hold yourself (and your team) accountable to them. These should be specific, actionable commitments that inform how you show up, how you work with others, and how you make decisions.
Illustration by Jasmin Pamukcu
3. Address systems, not symptoms: Always address the root causes of inequities—where systems and structures fundamentally shape the conditions for health.
Once you’ve diagnosed the root causes of inequities, you act on that knowledge. Start investigating these root causes by asking:
- What systems and structures are producing and reproducing these negative outcomes?
- How have misleading mindsets reinforced these outcomes?
- How have tools for systems change, like policies and budgets, been used to unfairly advantage some communities and unfairly disadvantage others?
4. Communicate and casemake for change: Use language as a tool for truth-telling and change. Combine evidence, strategy, and narrative to build your case and to inspire others to act. Frame problems clearly, name injustice explicitly, and tell stories that build power and possibility.
Author and social scientist Tiffany Manuel’s casemaking principles provide helpful guidance for communicating in ways that persuade people, mobilize support, shift understanding, and drive policy change. When you engage in casemaking, you can:
- Reframe the narrative from crisis to opportunity.
- Build broad support by meeting people where they are.
- Connect the dots between health outcomes and the systems that drive injustice.
- Demonstrate that equity benefits everyone.
5. Stand in solidarity and move as a movement: Align with grassroots movements that fight for justice. Become a co-conspirator in the collective struggle for bold, people-powered, and lasting transformation.
To advance equity and justice, public health must move with the boldness of a movement—and in solidarity with others. This means we must:
- Embrace a movement mindset through organizing, building narrative and cultural power, and prioritizing grassroots leadership.
- Build a big tent to help people across sectors see themselves as part of the movement for health justice.
- Demonstrate solidarity in action with tangible support such as using institutional resources to help advance collective agendas.
6. Build and share power: Move decision making into the hands of those most harmed by injustice. Invest in community-led solutions and support grassroots leadership that outlasts any single intervention.
As public health professionals, our responsibility is to help build power of the communities we serve and to break power of dominant institutions that perpetuate health injustice. We can do this by:
- Conducting a power analysis — a structured and collaborative process to help map where power and influence are concentrated in your institution, system, geographic area, and across your policy landscape.
- Creating structures and processes for community decision making.
- Planning for community self-determination and sustainability, co-designing sustainability strategies with community members and partners to ensure long-term impact.
7. Organize and mobilize resources: Fund what matters — and expand the pie. Build collective power to unlock, align, and direct resources toward communities long denied their fair share.
If equity and justice are true priorities, they must be reflected in how we direct, allocate, grow, and organize resources. We can take steps to fund equity and justice such as:
- Investing resources with intention, focusing on communities most harmed by injustice.
- Reimagining, redesigning, and diversifying funding opportunities.
- Building equity into operational budgets.
- Compensating community expertise.
Organizing and advocating for structural investment like sustained public health funding and philanthropic dollars to support long-term change.
8. Implement an inside-outside strategy: Build trust and accountability within institutions and with movements beyond them. Change doesn’t come from one direction — it takes coordinated action from every side.
An inside-outside strategy is a long-term approach that builds trust and collaboration between those working on the inside (within dominant institutions like government agencies, universities, and philanthropies) and those working on the outside (in community power-building groups, grassroots organizations, advocacy networks, and justice movements). This strategy involves:
- Building authentic relationships across organizations and levels of influence.
- Embracing distinct, yet complementary roles on both sides.
- Establishing alignment early and staying connected so everyone understands how the work will move forward.
- Planning for tension, disagreement, and conflict.
- Building collective muscle for co-governance.
- Celebrating wins and planning for setbacks.
9. Make equity and justice routine: Embed equity and justice into how you hire, plan, partner, and evaluate. Normalize what is now considered bold.
The more we build equity into routines, operations, and accountability structures, the more likely it is to take root and endure. It must be written into the documents and practices that shape our everyday work, from strategic plans to job goals. Also make sure to recognize and reward equity leadership.
10. Reimagine public health: Dream expansively. Define public health as a force for joy, flourishing, and liberation — and invite others to help create that future with you.
Reimagining public health means letting go of old assumptions — about what’s possible, about who is worthy, about where expertise lives. It means rejecting the notion that our work must be confined to narrow lanes or incremental reforms alone. It challenges us not only to confront unjust systems, but to dream up new ones that center care, accountability, reciprocity, interdependence, and possibility. The systems we have been forced to endure are formidable, but they are built on rules — and rules can be rewritten.
This column is adapted from the book Strategic Skills for Public Health Practice: Advancing Equity and Justice, published by APHA Press and the de Beaumont Foundation. Learn more about this title and others in the series.
A version of this column first appeared in the March/April 2026 issue of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice. See the final authenticated version.
