More than 300 community members attended the Health Equity Summit in February to hear nationally-recognized public health experts describe the health disparities that exist in the U.S. By the end of the day, conference attendees had augmented their increased knowledge with a pledge to advocate on behalf of institutional and policy solutions.

Keynote speaker Dr. Julie Gerberding, former Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a standing-room only crowd that America is far from being the

healthiest nation in the world. The U.S. spends the most on health, but ranks 24th on national health status, 37th on health system performance and 72nd in overall health investment performance.

Dr. Gerberding praised The Health Trust for its vision of Silicon Valley becoming the healthiest region in America and its work in reducing health disparities, an effort that parallels CDC’s Healthiest Nation campaign.

“The Health Trust is doing great work in motivating this community to identify issues from a grassroots level,” she said. “That is where we need to begin to embark on addressing disparity issues.”

“I’m absolutely impressed with the multi-sector commitment that I’m seeing here, not only among political leaders and public health leaders, but among all of these organizations, community and faith-based, who respect the diversity of the community but are doing all they can to address disparities.”

Dr. Gerberding underscored the important role local public health agencies can play – welcome words for Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County Public Health Officer, and Dr. Anthony Iton, Alameda County Public Health Officer, who also participated in the conference program.

Dr. Iton, featured in the award-winning “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick” documentary series, provided one of the most thought-provoking sessions of the day when he presented a new way to conceptualize and measure health equity in a community. He detailed the groundbreaking work underway in Alameda County considered a best practice to achieve health equity by addressing the social determinants of health through building community capacity, influencing the local policy agenda, and building capacity within public health.

During the second half of the conference, leaders from People Acting in Community Together (PACT) worked with participants in break-out sessions to concentrate on action plans for five policy solutions: oral health, Black infant health, the high school drop-out epidemic, health coverage for adults, and the home foreclosure crisis.

“I commend The Health Trust on an incredible Summit. You addressed health in a new way, engaged seemingly every relevant partner, and created the space for a broad-based and collaborative dialogue around health.”

“We didn’t want to just educate people to the issues of health disparities, but to guide and motivate them to take specific actions that could make a difference in Silicon Valley,” said Frederick J. Ferrer, CEO of The Health Trust. “The Summit brought together many of the community groups who organized dialogues about the documentary series ‘Unnatural Causes,’ other leaders in our region interested in health equity, and people from PACT who are well experienced in community organizing. We had all of the ingredients for success.”

Summit participants worked in small groups during afternoon breakout sessions to learn about how to get involved in five specific policy solutions.

The night before the Summit, more than 280 joined The Health Trust at the Mexican Heritage Plaza for dinner and a special performance by Teatro Vision of “The Woman Who Fell From The Sky.” The play is a true story of health disparity about a woman institutionalized when doctors misdiagnosed her unfamiliar language and culture as mental illness.

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