Skip to main content
Minnesota Department of Health logo
  • Main navigation

    • Home
    • Data, Statistics, and Legislation
    • Diseases and Conditions
    • Health Care Facilities, Providers, and Insurance
    • Healthy Communities, Environment, and Workplaces
    • Individual and Family Health
    • About Us
    • News and Announcements
    • Translated Materials

Main navigation mobile

  • Data, Statistics, and Legislation
  • Diseases and Conditions
  • Health Care Facilities, Providers, and Insurance
  • Healthy Communities, Environment, and Workplaces
  • Individual and Family Health
  • About Us
  • News and Announcements
  • Translated Materials
MDH Logo

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Healthy Communities, Environment and Workplaces
  3. Health Equity
  4. Health Equity Initiatives and Projects
Topic Menu

Health Equity

  • Health Equity Home
  • Announcements
  • Capacity Building Requests
  • Funding Opportunities
  • Newsletters
  • Reports and Publications

About Us

  • Division of Health Equity Strategy and Innovation
  • Office American Indian Health
  • Office of African American Health
  • Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity Strategy

Health Equity

  • Health Equity Home
  • Announcements
  • Capacity Building Requests
  • Funding Opportunities
  • Newsletters
  • Reports and Publications

About Us

  • Division of Health Equity Strategy and Innovation
  • Office American Indian Health
  • Office of African American Health
  • Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity Strategy
Contact Info
Health Equity Strategy and Innovation Division
651-201-5813
health.equity@state.mn.us

Contact Info

Health Equity Strategy and Innovation Division
651-201-5813
health.equity@state.mn.us

2020 Health Equity Summit Innovation Lab Stations

The 2020 Health Equity Summit will feature a health equity innovation lab where participants will experiment with human-centered design to identify innovations to advance health equity. Participants will be encouraged to stay with one station for the duration of the day. Registrants will be asked to select the top three stations you're most interested in participating in on your registration form.

Innovation Lab Stations on this page:
1. Creating Equitable Standards of Prenatal Care in Minnesota
2. Designing Equitable Environments for Older Adults in the Iron Range
3. Food Deserts and Sovereignty
4. Mobile Municipality: Renter Engagement to Address Barriers to Access
5. Resident Health Data Dashboard: Empowering Residents to Take Action
6. Summer Food Corps: Investing in Youth Leadership through Food Justice
7. "We Grew That!" Urban Gardening Program
8. YouthPower: Scaling Youth-Led Solutions to Inequity 



1. Creating Equitable Standards of Prenatal Care in Minnesota

Lead Organization: MN Department of Human Services  
Geographic Focus: Twin Cities Metro 
Populations Served: African American & American Indian women and babies; health systems; health professionals

Description: Minnesota has some of the nation's worst maternal and infant health disparities for African Americans and American Indians. This is in large part due to historical trauma experienced by these communities along with ongoing discrimination and institutional racism that persists within medicine. This has led to distrust between these communities and the health care systems that seek to serve them.

Integrated Care in High Risk Pregnancies (ICHRP) is a community-led collaborative perinatal care model that has demonstrated success in mitigating psychosocial risks during pregnancy for at risk American Indian and African American women and improving the service models for these women as well as their birth outcomes. This idea will help educate medical providers and health systems throughout the state about the potential impact this model can have to address this disparity.

Back to top

2. Designing Equitable Environments for Older Adults to Thrive in the Iron Range

Lead Organization: Fairview Range 
Geographic Focus: Iron Range 
Populations Served: Older adults 

Description: In 2015, a group of ladies in the Hibbing, Minn. area struggled to restore an older adult fitness program. They found that the area did not have the culture nor the resources for a sustainable program. Further, the environment was not safe, did not have adequate public transportation or access to basic needs within walking distance, or accessible walking paths year-round. Older adults were seen as a problem and a burden, a tsunami of old people and not the population that the Range wants to invest in.

The journey led to partnerships across the Iron Range, including working with the MN Rural Health Advisory Committee, and identifying Fairview Range as the "anchor institution" for a Community Healthy Aging Committee. The committee is piloting an engagement process with older adults, changing the narrative of aging, using the concepts of “othering and belonging,” and assessing the physical and social environment. The model also addresses the need for a continuum of health education classes, age-friendly clinical services, and community fitness, wellness, and food programs. 

Back to top

3. Food Deserts and Sovereignty

Lead Organization: Bois Forte Band of Chippewa
Geographic Focus: Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Reservation (Nett Lake, Vermilion, and Deer Creek in St. Louis and Koochiching counties) 
Populations Served: American Indians 

Description: As a sovereign nation, Bois Forte has authority over the land; having natural resources is an asset that tribal members could potentially live off of. However, because of centuries of colonization resulting in loss of culture, the younger generation is less knowledgeable of how to do this. Further, Bois Forte is a food desert, with the closest grocery store with fresh produce at least a 1-hour drive.

Local clinic data reports that of clinic patients: 13% are diabetic, 27% are overweight, 31% are obese and 15% are morbidly obese. Of those individuals, 20% were not able to work and 21% had an income of $20,000 - $29,000 per year. Those that have limited incomes are forced to buy processed, pre-made or fast food as a means to make every dollar stretch rather than buying old produce that is near the end of its shelf life (the only options in local convenience stores).

Bois Forte seeks to provide healthy foods at an affordable cost in its own community and address issues of: food access, transportation, health disparities and poverty. Further, they seek to provide education to community members about food sovereignty and to promote the return to the cultural values and practices of the generations before them.

Back to top

4. Mobile Municipality: Renter Engagement to Address Barriers to Access

Lead Organization: City of Bloomington 
Geographic Focus: Bloomington, MN 
Populations Served: Low-income; immigrants; seniors; limited mobility; parents

Description: Bloomington's Division of Public Health (BPH) has been doing intensive engagement at South Gate Apartments, a large multi-unit housing complex (244 units, 800+ residents). For residents, the bus route to City Hall where many needed services are located takes 1 hour, two buses and 20 minutes of walking each way (a 4.5 mile total distance).

BPH convened other city departments and community organizations that also reach renters in and around South Gate with a goal "to generate and sustain effective collaboration among community partners so that our work reflects the reality of people who rent in Bloomington." BPH is now in an action-planning phase and trying to think thoughtfully about how to bring renters in to inform this work and to begin addressing some of the systems barriers that prevent renters from being able to participate fully in civic, social and community activities that promote health, well-being and agency. BPH also seeks to have an immediate impact to make it easier for residents to access the services they need.

Back to top

5. Resident Health Data Dashboard: Empowering Residents to Take Action on Health Equity

Lead Organization: City of Minneapolis   
Geographic Focus: Minneapolis 
Populations Served: Low-income; older adults; people of color/American Indians; disability communities

Description: Institutional racism and discrimination often exclude residents from having decision making power and access to their data/information, which generates distrust between communities and systems when their data is used without their input. The Minneapolis Health Department (MHD) and multiple partners created an online Resident Health Data Dashboard as a tool for accessing and sharing reliable resident health data from a variety of sources. This project includes residents throughout, with a goal of providing actionable data about the contributors to health inequities and making it available to residents and the organizations who serve them to address barriers to optimal health. 
The Dashboard will continue to expand as a tool for residents and partner organizations, promoting resident voice and leadership throughout. This participatory process ensures the Dashboard meets the needs of residents. MHD is working to ensure that capacity is built across all partner organizations to discuss and use the data in accurate and meaningful ways. MHD hopes to scale up ideas for this project, bring more partners on board, and be strategic with its growing set of data.

Back to top

6. Summer Food Corps: Investing in Youth Leadership through Food Justice

Lead Organization: Damiano Center Kids' Kitchen
Geographic Focus: Duluth   
Populations Served: Youth of color/indigenous youth; low-income families

Description: The Summer Food Corps creates systemic change by engaging historically underrepresented youth to combat health inequities in their community. The program inspires youth who have not seen themselves represented at almost any leadership level in Duluth. The Summer Food Corps provides a first job that pays minimum wage and gives youth an opportunity to learn about nutritious foods, build leadership skills, and develop employment skills. In addition to building basic employment skills, teens learn about food justice. Damiano Center Kids' Kitchen will share how Summer Food Corps advances health equity and how the project could be replicated or scaled in other communities across the state.

Back to top

7. "We Grew That!" Urban Gardening Program 

Lead Organization: Urban Farm and Garden Alliance
Geographic Focus: Twin Cities Metro 
Populations Served: Black, white and Latinx communities ages 10-70

Description: The Urban Farm and Garden Alliance (UFGA) is a collaboration of Community Gardens and a group of Backyard Box Gardeners that promote reconciliation, healing, peace, and social and environmental justice through the cultivation and sharing of food in the Summit-University (Rondo) and Frogtown communities of St. Paul, MN. UFGA and its partners cultivate a sense of community with the goal to create greater access to nutritious foods, as well as providing green space for residents in neighborhoods that have suffered the consequences of institutional racism.

UFGA created GrowRx which has worked with Open Cities Health Center to give gardens as a social prescription rather than medication. Through gardening in GrowRx, participants shared the multitude of ways the program has improved their health, ranging from improved mood and diet to being more physically active and connected to their neighbors, the earth and their ancestors. One barrier GrowRx experiences is sufficient capacity to offer enough programming for participants to engage with and utilize help with gardening and gardening questions. This innovation lab station addresses this need and hopes to grow UFGA’s capacity through partnerships, volunteers and other support.  

Back to top

8. YouthPower: Scaling Youth-Led Solutions to Inequity 

Lead Organization: Saint Paul Youth Services 
Geographic Focus: Twin Cities Metro 
Populations Served: Black youth; youth of color; indigenous youth; LGBTQIA youth

Description: Saint Paul Youth Services’ (SPYS) YouthPower Leadership Institute is a year-round, holistic program for young people who have had negative encounters with public systems such as juvenile justice, mental health, and social services. YouthPower grew out of the recognition that youth of color are experts on the inequities they face but are too rarely at the table when decisions to address these inequities are made.

A leadership curriculum guides youth through the process of establishing positive personal and cultural identity, identifying and honing unique strengths, envisioning the changes they want to see in the world, developing policy agendas, examining power structures, and designing creative tactics for effecting change. Youth are paid a living wage for their work as advocates and experts while they conduct advocacy and training on issues impacting their lives. YouthPower seeks to incorporate feedback from new stakeholders to help design a plan to scale up YouthPower to reach youth throughout Minnesota.

Back to top

Tags
  • equity
Last Updated: 10/03/2022

Get email updates


Minnesota Department of Health logo

Privacy Policy
Equal Opportunity
Translated Materials
Feedback Form
About MDH
Minnesota.gov
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linked In
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
Minnesota Department of Health Minnesota Department of health print search share facebook instagram linkedin twitter youtube