Strategic plan to advance racial equity

The State Health Assessment (SHA) and State Health Improvement Plan (SHIP) reflects the Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity.

Overview

DPH commits to advancing racial equity as the foundation of its mission to advance health equity across the Commonwealth. DPH’s five-year plan to advance health equity aims to lead with race/ethnicity, though not exclusively, by implementing a racial-equity-informed intersectional approach to partnering with priority populations that experience the most deeply entrenched inequities in public health. This racial-equity-centered approach to health equity is the foundational public health strategy that guides the Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity and guided the development of the 2024 Massachusetts SHA and SHIP. 

The image contains the following text: Advance Health Equity is the title. Under this title there are four items: Lead Emergency Preparedness & Response, Strengthen the Public Health Workforce, Modernize Public Health Infrastructure, and Enhance Public Service.

Five foundational public health strategies

The SHA/SHIP embraces the five foundational public health strategies from the Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity. In undertaking the internal process that has led to this plan, DPH sought to bring into reality the centering of racial equity in its own organizational development and professional practice. By transforming itself as an organization, a state agency, a workforce, a regulator, a provider of care, and an organizational public servant, DPH aims to advance racial equity throughout the Commonwealth. In taking action on this plan, DPH is better positioned to engage in and lead critical dimensions of Executive Office of Health and Human Services’ (EOHHS’s) secretariat-wide health equity strategy and the larger Healey-Driscoll Administration’s agenda of advancing racial equity for all.  

Vision and mission

The DPH vision and mission was updated throughout the Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity process.

The DPH vision states that Massachusetts has an equitable and just public health system that supports optimal well-being for all people in Massachusetts, centering those with systematically and culturally oppressed identities and circumstances.

The mission of DPH is to promote and protect health and wellness and prevent injury and illness for all people, prioritizing racial equity in health by improving equitable access to quality public health and healthcare services and partnering with communities most impacted by health inequities and structural racism. 

Learn more about DPH mission and vision, strategic priorities and Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity.

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