By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | July 3, 2018
Senior Editor, ETR

A memory: I’m presenting a training on AIDS. AIDS, not HIV, because it’s in the mid-1980’s. The HIV test does not yet exist. Participants in this training will be working with people at risk, and at this time in history, in this country, that’s mostly gay men.

By Theresa Boschert, JD | June 12, 2018
Project Director, ETR

I’d like to tell you a story about a woman I’ll call Minnie. She’s a single mom with two pre-school aged children. She called my office one day asking for help about her housing situation.

Minnie and her children lived in a second floor apartment in a privately owned low rent housing unit. She was routinely sleeping in her car with her kids because her downstairs neighbor came home from work each day around 6 PM and began smoking. By nine o’clock, her children, one of whom had asthma, were coughing and having problems breathing.

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | May 8, 2018
Senior Editor, ETR

LGBTQ students have plenty of reasons to feel like they don’t “fit” in a lot of schools. They are likely to experience pervasive harassment and discrimination, which may be delivered by peers, educators or administrators. Most attend classes that make no reference to their relationships, LGBTQ contributions to society, or the history of the gay and transgender rights movements.

ETR's Health Equity Framework gives us a way to examine issues such as these and be more focused and intentional about the steps we take to address them.

By Beverly Iniguez-Conrique | May 1, 2018
Research Assistant, ETR

In 1994, two very important events happened in my life. First, one of the earliest papers on Social Dominance Theory was published. Second, I was born.

Social Dominance Theory holds that people develop a set of beliefs—“legitimizing myths”—that support their attitudes about social inequities.

By Vignetta Charles, PhD & Karin Coyle, PhD | April 24, 2018
CEO (VC) & Chief Science Officer (KC), ETR

At ETR, we advance health equity through science-based solutions. We’ve been doing it for 37 years. But it wasn’t until recently that we developed our own framework to explicitly and transparently ground our work in health equity. This more intentional approach to health equity has energized our mission-driven work.

Cynthia A. Gómez, PhD | March 15, 2018
Professor Emerita in Health Education, Founding Director Health Equity Institute, San Francisco State University

The way I like to describe the concept of health equity is to say that it is the solution to the problem of health inequities. Health inequities are differences in health outcomes that are avoidable.

I think of health equity as a visionary goal where all people have equal opportunity, access, and resources to achieve the best health possible.