New Health Disparities Grant Program video features the work of Lake County Build a Generation and Lake County community members

“So in this country, we still believe in the myth of meritocracy, where if you simply work hard, everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve what they want to achieve. And that’s simply not true.”–Erik Wallace, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine

In 2021, the Health Disparities Grant Program, a project of the Office of Health Equity at the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, created a video about several of their recent grantees, all of whom were working on social determinants of health. According to the Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization, social determinants of health are the conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes. Social determinants include things like housing, transportation or education and access to food. People’s access to social determinants are shaped by the distribution of money, power, and resources at global, national, and local levels–and therefore, social determinants are mostly responsible for the health inequities (unfair and avoidable differences in health status) that we see in our communities and in our world.

This new video features the work of the Lake County Housing Coalition and the Policy Advocacy Team, as well as the work being done by local residents of manufactured housing communities, to increase access to healthy, safe, and affordable housing in Lake County.

Thank you to the Partners in Evaluation and Research from Kaiser Permanente’s Institute for Health Research and the Office of Health Equity from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment for making this video come to life!