About the Health Equity Resource Library

The Health Equity Resource Library is a free, digital repository of evidence-based resources related to addressing COVID-19 health disparities and inequities.

The Resource Library was developed by the National Network of Public Health Institutes and our partners to support recipients funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) OT21-2103: The National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities. The Resource Library is designed to be used by OT21-2103 grant recipients to search and sort evidence-based practices that can be adapted and implemented in their jurisdictions and communities.

The resources were selected for inclusion in the Library through a review by four partner organizations: the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, the Colorado Health Institute, Health Resources in Action, and the University of Michigan School of Social Work. The partners identified evidence-based practices for the Resource Library related to the grant’s four strategy areas:

Mitigation and Prevention

Expand existing and/or develop new mitigation and prevention resources and services to reduce health disparities among populations at higher risk and those that are underserved.

Infrastructure Support

Build, leverage, and expand infrastructure support for health prevention and control among populations that are at higher risk and underserved.

Data Collection and Reporting

Increase/improve data collection and reporting for populations experiencing a disproportionate burden of health disparities, severe illness, and mortality to guide responses to public health challenges.

Partnerships and Collaboration

Mobilize partners and collaborators to advance health equity and address social determinants of health among populations at higher risk and those that are underserved.

The partners employed a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure included resources are relevant, reliable, evidence-informed, and useful to practitioners. The partners applied operational definitions of best, promising, emerging, and novel practices developed for this work¹ to assist users in filtering the resources by these levels of evidence. For the purposes of the review, the term “practice” is used broadly to include interventions, programs, strategies, policies, procedures, processes, or activities.

The review included peer-reviewed and grey literature to include relevant practices that have not yet been well documented/formally evaluated. The Library seeks to include a range of resources, including those about new and innovative practices that have not yet produced peer-reviewed literature.

The Health Equity Resource Library will be updated with new resources throughout the duration of the OT21-2103 grant. Recipients are encouraged to check back regularly for new content.

¹Definitions have been adapted from the following sources:

Brownson, R. C., Fielding, J. E., & Green, L. W. (2018). Building capacity for evidence-based Public Health: Reconciling the pulls of practice and the push of Research. Annual Review of Public Health, 39(1), 27–53.

Ng, E., & De Colombani, P. (2015). Framework for selecting best practices in Public Health: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Public Health Research, 4(3).

Puddy, R. W. & Wilkins, N. (2011). Understanding Evidence Part 1: Best Available Research Evidence. A Guide to the Continuum of Evidence of Effectiveness. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Spencer, L. M., Schooley, M. W., Anderson, L. A., Kochtitzky, C. S., DeGroff, A. S., Devlin, H. M., & Mercer, S. L. (2013). Seeking best practices: A conceptual framework for planning and improving evidence-based practices. Preventing Chronic Disease, 10.