The Virginia Department of Health has released two new dashboards focused on equity: Equity in Action & Equity at a Glance. Equity in Action highlights data related to programs and initiatives that have addressed equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Equity at a Glance serves as an assessment into the social determinants of health and equity across Virginia.

These two dashboards were developed in the response to House Joint Resolution 537 declaring racism as a public health crisis.

“The social, economic, education, and health-related initiatives offered by the Commonwealth of Virginia must be built on a foundation of equity. In order to operationalize and sustain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the Commonwealth passed Virginia Code Section 2.2-435.12, which requires Virginia’s Chief Diversity Officer to conduct an equity assessment.”

The navigation of the site provides both an overview at the state and local level in the six health equity topic areas:

• income and poverty,
• educational attainment,
• food access,
• unemployment,
• broadband access
• and housing insecurity.

Each topic area includes several metrics that summarize the advancement made and opportunity for growth. These dashboards also display a scorecard for both the state and local level, ranking localities within Virginia and comparing Virginia to national averages. This dashboard allows for the disaggregation of indicators including an array of data visualizations that highlight disparities across race and ethnicity, education, income, geography and rurality.

It is promising to see equity highlighted in action on the ONE Virginia Strategic Plan for Inclusive Excellence. We are also excited that future versions of these dashboards will include an expanded set of topic areas such as workforce diversity and criminal justice metrics. Over the next month, we will release a series of blogs highlighting the findings of each dashboard.

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