Public health relates to many of the other Themes in the Equity Indicators framework. Public health outcomes are tied to housing quality, environment, and neighborhood. Social determinants of health include poverty, employment, and educational attainment. The public health field has historically been dedicated to understanding and addressing racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes, but the complexity of these issues contributes to the persistence of inequity.

Mortality is a widely recognized measure of population health. This Topic includes an Indicator on infant mortality, which is particularly important to public health and relates to other health outcomes, including access to care. The other two Indicators in this Topic, life expectancy and premature death, reveal disparities in how long individuals are expected to live and whether they are able to meet those expectations. In all three Indicators, African Americans have the worst outcomes.

Wellness, physical activity, and nutrition are essential for children as they prepare for a healthy lifestyle and positive health outcomes as adults. The Child Health Topic includes three Indicators that measure different aspects of child health and wellness: childhood asthma emergency department visits, physical fitness, and SNAP recipiency. The first Indicator measures asthma-related emergency department visits and is related to the environmental and housing conditions that affect children’s health. The second Indicator, physical fitness, a measure of student fitness levels assessed in schools, tracks physical aptitude and activity. The third Indicator, SNAP recipiency, shows whether families have adequate income to provide healthy food for their children.

Physical and mental health encompasses a wide range of health outcomes and can be measured in many different ways. The Indicators in this Topic were chosen to reflect important public health issues that are not captured in other Topics in the Public Health Theme. The first two Indicators measure visits to the emergency department for severe mental illness and for substance abuse. The third Indicator measures new HIV diagnoses in Alameda County. In all three of these Indicators, the greatest disparities are between African American and Asian Oaklanders.

The Access to Preventive Care Topic includes two Indicators that measure preventable hospitalizations related to acute and chronic disease, and one that measures health insurance. Non-White Oaklanders are more likely to be hospitalized for conditions that could have been prevented by having better access to preventive care. They are also more likely to be uninsured, which is a major deterrent to accessing preventive health services. Poverty and immigration status may make it even more likely for racial and ethnic minorities to lack insurance and forego needed care.