Alameda County, CA

Team Profile Summary

The Alameda County team promotes health equity through a community-centered local policy agenda focused on economic development/income, education, housing, incarceration, land use, and transportation.

Team Profile Details

Problem Statement

Despite certain positive shifts in overall health outcomes for residents in Alameda County, significant inequities exist, particularly among African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, as well as low-income residents.
The Alameda County team focuses its efforts in the City of Oakland. Oakland is the largest city in Alameda County and its neighborhoods have the largest concentrations of health inequities.

Team Objectives

1. Affordable Housing: An adequate supply of housing is constructed and preserved in proportion to demand, maintaining cultural, racial, and class diversity of the community. All housing is safe, habitable, and supports good health. No household resides in overcrowded conditions, is homeless, or spends more than 30 percent of monthly income on housing.
2. Education: All school-aged youth have access to a quality education that prepares them to be productive members of the community, provides a safe and stimulating learning environment, and prepares them to achieve their goals. Schools expect and ensure that all students graduate. Life-long learning opportunities are accessible to all residents.
3. Economic Development: All residents have access to high quality, living wage, local employment opportunities that provide healthy, safe, and meaningful work, so as to increase income and wealth equity.
4. Incarceration: Institutional racism is addressed by all aspects of the criminal justice system. Alternatives to incarceration and evidence-based models are in place to address the underlying causes of crime and reduce the incidence of incarceration as a solution to social problems.
5. Land Use: All residents live in communities where the air, soil, and water are clean and provide the conditions for good health. All residents have access to health promoting goods and services. Communities are designed to encourage social cohesion, through central meeting places and celebrate neighborhood identity. Jobs, affordable housing and transit are collocated when possible and healthy. Communities are designed to promote and support safe walking and biking, to provide access to quality affordable food, and to avoid disproportionate concentration of businesses that influence health negatively.
6. Transportation: Citizens are easily able to go about their daily lives utilizing transportation systems that are accessible from their home and work and that are affordable. All public transit systems run on-time with well maintained vehicles and shelters.

Community Partners

Alameda County Public Health Department

Alameda County Board of Supervisors– Supervisor Keith Caron’s Office

Oakland Unified School District – Board of Education Director Gregory Hodge