Health Equity Resource Library 
Advancing the Mission: Tools for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Advancing the mission: Tools for equity, diversity, and inclusion contains eight tools to help organizations identify opportunities to integrate equity goals into their programs and operations.

This toolkit includes an overview of the work done by Annie E. Casey's internal planning group to "hard-wire" equity, diversity and inclusion within the organization. It is divided into two sections: one for "cross-cutting tools" that help identify opportunities to address equity across an organization and the knowledge and skills needed to do so, and a second for "hard-wire tools" that focuses on specific structures and processes that can be changed within an organization to advance health equity. Each of the tools have a standard set of three questions to help identify whether that particular tool is the tool you need.

When to use

This toolkit can be used to understand how an organization started and is continuing to incorporate equity into its work.

Within the cross-cutting tools:

• Use the Institutional Assessment Quiz to find out where your organization is in the Learning Continuum for Race-Focused Work
• Use the "Creating and Sustaining an Affinity Group" if you are interested in forming an internal committee or working group that lifts up issues of equity
• Use the "Building and Sustaining Awareness" if you are looking for ways to create and maintain organizational awareness of equity.

Within the hard-wire tools:

• Use the "Institutionalizing Management Accountability" if you are interesting in creating a management group whose purpose is to develop outcomes for equity work and track performance within the organization
• Use the "Institutionalizing Commitment through Senior Staffing" tool to create a sample equity coordinator/director job description
• Use "Institutionalizing Commitment through Equity Coaches" if you're interested in developing equity coaches within department units or sections.
• Use the "Grantmaking for Equity Results" if you are interested in building equity into the grant making process
• Use the "Racial Equity Impact Analysis" to determine if policies, programs and practices are likely to address existing gaps around disparities
• The final tool, "Hard-Wiring for Socially Responsible Operations," provides a case example of how the Foundation was able to produce an equitable outcome in their purchasing from caterers for food functions.

Things to consider

The authors clearly point out that while this was developed by a foundation, most of what is in the toolkit can be applied broadly to any organization.

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Advancing the mission: Tools for equity, diversity, and inclusion

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