Health equity means that everyone, no matter their situation, has the chance to achieve their best possible health. This creates a fair and just opportunity for all to reach their highest level of well-being (Prevention Institute & NSVRC, 2021). Addressing factors like education, income, employment, community safety, and social support is crucial to improving the conditions in which we live, learn, work, and play. We can look out for one another and make choices to promote the health, safety, and well-being of all.
Why is health equity part of efforts to end sexual abuse, harassment, and assault? Many of us were taught that it’s only fair to treat everyone the same and that everyone should have the same opportunities. But we know that every person and every community has different needs and resources based on how they grew up, where they live, what kind of opportunities their ancestors had, and generations of laws, policies, practices, and social norms that shape our experience of living. Those are the same factors that influence rates of sexual violence, so we need to address them. These different needs call for different types or amounts of resources and access (National Resource Center on Domestic Violence [NRCDV] & [NSVRC], 2021).
Sexual harassment, abuse, and assault hurts our individual well-being, and also harms the well-being of our community. Every person and every community has different needs and resources based on how they grew up, where they live, what kind of opportunities their ancestors had, as well as generations of laws, policies, practices, and social norms that shape our experience of living. These different life experiences have been shaped by deep-rooted abuses of power, which we need to address in order to prevent sexual violence. To make sure that everyone has the opportunity to be the healthiest they can be, NSVRC focuses on the following approaches to enhance health equity:
| Elevating Community Leadership and Resilience | Creating Spaces for Healing in Prevention Efforts | Facilitating Internal Organizational Change |
| Addressing Underlying Factors That Contribute to Violence and Safety | Partnering Across Fields and Movements | Working Together to Create Equitable, Respectful Communities |
https://www.cdc.gov/health-equity/what-is/paving-the-road-to-health-equity.html
This resource shares CDC’s health equity framework as well as links to other publications.
Although the words ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ are often used interchangeably, this document outlines the differences.
https://www.nsvrc.org/backtobasics
This resource makes connections between health equity and our work to prevent sexual and intimate partner violence. It centers the stories of survivors at the intersections of systemic racism, violence, and oppression. It explores ways to build both individual and organizational capacity to address health inequity. And, it offers a call to action for those ready to commit to health equity in their gender-based violence prevention work.
The Spanish version can be found here.
https://www.rootsofhealthinequity.org/ is a a web-based course for the public health workforce
https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/HealthEquityGuidingPrinciples.pdf
These guiding principles are intended to help public health professionals ensure their communication work, including communication of public health science, meets the specific needs and priorities of the populations they serve and addresses all people inclusively, accurately, and respectfully.
https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/message-matters-new-resource-talking-about-health-equity
This new tool offers strategies for engaging communities around health equity by aligning messages with the values of specific audiences. It includes clear examples of how to talk about health equity in plain, accessible language
https://www.nsvrc.org/resource/changing-way-we-think-about-childhood-adversity
On this episode, NSVRC talks with Dr. Julie Sweetland, Senior Advisor at the FrameWorks Institute, about her 2021 report, Reframing Childhood Adversity: Promoting Upstream Approaches, and how it connects with our research on messages about preventing sexual harassment, abuse, and assault.
https://www.nsvrc.org/resource/2500/reframing-childhood-adversity-making-role-our-communities-clear
On this episode, NSVRC talks with Dr. Julie Sweetland again, who shares guidance on how to talk about community- and policy-level strategies for prevention.
Certain groups of people are at higher risk for sexual violence, and those same people are also the most impacted by inequitable systems and oppression in our society. This infographic provides a framework for talking about these realities.
This graphic illustration tells the story of how health equity is connected to preventing gender-based violence, and describes meaningful ways to advance these shared goals through collaboration. This resource utilizes NRCDV’s Storytelling Framework to make the case for advancing wellness through an anti-oppression lens. Available in Spanish and English.
This Putting it into Practice: Diversity and Inclusion in Prevention blog post highlights Lydia Guy Ortiz’s Revisioning the Sexual Violence Continuum as a tool to prioritize diversity and inclusivity in prevention efforts.
https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/preventionista/introducing-risk-and-protective-factors-infographic
This infographic highlights the connections between risk and protective factors and social determinants of health at the various levels of the social ecology, and can be used to link sexual violence prevention with anti-oppression and related public health issues in order to create more effective change.
https://www.changelabsolutions.org/drivers-health-inequity
This interactive tool addresses the five fundamental drivers of health inequity by developing legal and policy strategies to transform policies and systems. It provides real-world examples of how communities across the country have used equitable policymaking to confront the drivers of health inequity and create systems change.
Data equity means thinking about how methods of collecting and analyzing data may include biases or stereotypes. Those working to end sexual abuse, assault, and harassment need to understand data equity to make sure the data tells the full picture of the issue. On this episode, NSVRC talks with Heather Krause, the founder of We All Count and a data scientist and statistician with over a decade of experience building tools to support equity and ethics in data.
The collection includes links to tools that can be useful in building internal capacity and external communication about the connection between economic support and sexual and intimate partner violence prevention.
This document dives into specific approaches and examples that apply a health equity lens to sexual violence prevention. By leading with health equity, we can work together to build collective power and create the kind of equitable, respectful communities we want to live in.
This webinar recording highlights organizations included in the Health Equity Approach to Preventing Sexual Violence Guide.
Session 1: Key Concepts and Components of Strategies and Approaches
Session 2: E4 Violence Prevention Strategy Selection Framework
Session 3: Guiding Principles and Processes of Implementation
Session 4: Community and Multi-Sector Partnerships
While Black women can experience violence and dehumanization when seeking health care in general, this is especially true for survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence. This disparity makes it difficult to access care and trust the health systems as a whole. Guests on this recording discuss how to center Black survivors in the fight for health equity and violence prevention.
https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/housing-and-prevention-podcast-series
This podcast series on housing for prevention was co-created by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. Our organizations collaborate on an initiative that supports advocates in meeting the housing needs of survivors. And, in reflecting on that work together, we became eager to talk about the ways that housing is also a tool for preventing violence.
This highlight reel includes excerpts and examples of health equity in the field and tells a story of how to translate an academic term into real life practices and make a difference in the communities we serve.
This 5-part recorded webinar series explores how the promotion of health equity translates into real-world prevention strategies and organizational policy by building the toolkits of practitioners and their organizations, and offering explicit examples of people putting health equity concepts into practice.
https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/language-and-health-equity-lessons-access-and-justice-field
NSVRC asked Vanessa C. Marcano-Kelly of Caracas Language Solutions, LLC; Ariel Valdes and Diana Mancera from Jane Doe, Inc.; and Yusra Ahmed of HEART Women and Girls to reflect on their journey toward language access and justice, health disparities, lessons they’ve learned, and tips for others in the field.
This brief provides information on how Rape Prevention and Education funded programs connect the dots between health equity and anti-oppression work.
This series consists of five interviews with people doing great prevention work in the midst of a pandemic. The interviewees recognize that the pandemic didn’t create health inequities but rather magnified them, and they’ve focused their work on the root causes of these inequities. They shared great insight with us on what they’ve done, how they’ve done it, and how listeners can focus their own prevention work around health equity.
https://preventipv.org/innovation/deltaimpact/payequity/
This resource draws on lessons learned by advocates funded to advance prevention through CDC’s DELTA Impact program, specifically in their work to advance economic justice by promoting a thriving wage. It provides an overview of the systems of oppression that cause harm, especially to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and offers tangible strategies to move toward racial and economic justice.
https://www.safestates.org/page/BSSwebinars
This 6-part webinar series explores and provided real-life examples to support the “Building Equity into Safer States” tool to help injury and violence prevention (IVP) organizations integrate health equity across the core components of a model program.
This assessment provides public health leaders with tools and guidance to help identify the skills, organizational practices, and infrastructure necessary to achieve health equity. The Self-Assessment document supplements the Local Health Department Organizational Self-Assessment for Addressing Health Inequities: Toolkit and Guide to Implementation developed by the Bay Area Regional Health Inequity Initiative.
https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/anti-blackness-movement-podcast-series
This podcast series features interviews with five Black movement leaders about their experiences of anti-Blackness in the movement to end gender based violence and steps we can take to create a movement that is inclusive of Black workers and survivors.