Image credit: Andy Feliciotti via Unsplash
OneNature was delighted to be invited to attend a special convening hosted by the New America Foundation, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Lumina Foundation, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth on November 30th in Washington, DC.
The daylong conference was related to the recently released Federal Plan for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience (ELTRR). It targeted “equitable well-being” as a goal for policy design and implementation.
The agenda included remarks from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves, Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey, Counselor to the U.S. Treasury Secretary on Racial Equity Janis Bowdler, and others, and was followed by an afternoon of interactive sessions.
The first panel discussed the question, “How are we reimagining social and economic progress, and what role do equity and well-being play?” and included representatives from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, RAND Corporation, Brookings, and the National League of Cities. The panelists explored the role of measurement and narratives around well-being and what the US might learn from the experiences of measuring well-being in other countries. Such as understanding black communities in the US through data on what is going well, ensuring the data collected and policies created don’t reinforce structural racism, and how some cities are balancing equity with well-being and creating visual maps of well-being for the public to understand.
The second panel examined “Policy Directions for Advancing Equity and well-being,” with representatives from New America, the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Department of Health and Human Services. In this panel, the participants highlighted the language in the U.S. Constitution that gives the government the “power to provide for the general welfare of the United States.” They emphasized the extensive data resources already available in the government and how this data could be more compatible with other data collection and more consistently communicated to the public. They also discussed the importance of subjective well-being as a way to focus policy initiatives on what matters most to Americans and determine the highest leverage policies to increase the well-being of Americans equitably.
The third panel addressed “Local Approaches to Leveraging Data for Equity and well-being Outcomes.” It included the Counselor for Racial Equity to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Treasury, and representation from the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, the Social Progress Imperative, and Civic well-being Partners. Presenters shared lessons from local initiatives. For example, in Allegany County, they are focusing on reaching the most vulnerable populations to reduce infant mortality in that group. The Social Progress Imperative is working with local partners to measure and enhance social progress using a well-being and equity approach. They are working with their local partners to use well-being and equity data for decision-making. For example, they and their local partners have asked healthcare practitioners to look at a local equity map when prescribing and think about the larger context of their interventions. Civic well-being Partners shared the importance of including unexpected partners in a local well-being project, including artists, activists, youth, and municipal partners like fire departments. They all emphasized the importance of not just bringing these groups “to the table” but going to the existing tables to meet community members where they are.
After a lunch break, the afternoon was filled with working sessions and opportunities to learn about existing well-being data tools and initiatives in the federal government and civil society.
Recordings of the morning sessions can be found here.
This is just the start of the collaboration on this important topic, and OneNature is excited to be involved in the next steps!
__