PolicyMap Contributes to Healthy and Equitable Investment Convening

Volunteers sort donations of food and clothing.

With the goal of moving toward a more equity-focused, data-informed, and community responsive approach to community investment, the Healthy and Equitable Community Investment (HECI) work group convened a group of stakeholders, including PolicyMap, to better understand existing tools and health equity measurement practices.  This effort, funded through a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, resulted in the recent release of the report Healthy and Equitable Community Investment: Recommendations for the emerging ecosystem of tools, approaches and data sources to support community investment’s impact on health and equity in communities.

Cover of the report entitled "Healthy and Equitable Community Investment: Recommendations for the emerging ecosystem of tools, approaches, and data sources to support community investments impact on health and equity in communities."

The report found that while there are still challenges with defining and measuring the impact of investing in “health equity,” identifiable steps can and should be taken to advance the field. These include:

  • Better integrate and align tools as a body of work.
  • Build the field of those “investing with purpose.”
  • Come to a shared understanding of what matters, and then measure it.
  • Fund and institutionalize the measurement and evaluation of community investment.
  • Continue to adopt and evolve to determine the best ways community investment can respond to COVID-19.

Read the full report and detailed recommendations to learn more.