The Advancing Equity in Pandemic Response and Recovery Framework provides a means for policymakers and practitioners at the local, state, and national levels to begin to craft policies and practices that advance equity in pandemic response and throughout recovery.
“The pandemic brought to the forefront the disparities in health outcomes related to race in the United States that have long existed,” says Glenn Landers, co-principal investigator of the Aligning in Crisis project. “This framework provides a way for policymakers to think about how investments made now to combat the virus and those tied to rebuilding after the public health emergency address disparities and advance equity over the long term. The current emergency does not have to pass to begin thinking about how to build a more equitable future that ensures measures enacted now are built to last and meet the needs of everybody, but particularly those most affected by health disparities.”
Central to the framework is an emphasis on equity — defined by the World Health Organization as “the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically” — and the interrelationship between issues directly related to COVID-19 and those tied to the underlying social determinants of health.
The framework identifies opportunities at three levels: immediate response, post-pandemic recovery, and rebuilding. The brief also offers guiding questions for those using the framework to evaluate policy and practice alternatives:
- Which phase does the policy or practice address — immediate response, post-pandemic recovery, or rebuilding — and how does it relate to other aspects of the framework?
- What is the important social risk factor or infrastructure need that the policy or practice addresses?
- Which stakeholders are affected by the policy or practice and have their voices been amplified?
- What is the underlying, root cause of the trend?
- Where is there leverage to address the underlying cause of the trend?
- How will the policy or practice work, and what might be some of the unintended consequences?
The framework was developed by researchers from the School of Public Health at George Washington University and the Georgia Health Policy Center, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of the Aligning in Crisis project.