Strategic Approaches

The goal of the Gulf Research Program’s Health and Resilience Board is to put science into action in ways that enhance health and well-being across communities in the Gulf region and Alaska.

“Health and well-being” is the lens through which the GHRB develops its programs and projects, and it uses the Gulf Research Program’s four strategic approaches to implement its work:

• Advance Science & Understanding

• Build Partnerships & Engage Networks

• Bridge Knowledge to Action

• Monitor for Progress & Change

The GHRB uses two complementary frameworks to approach its work:

• Six Community Capitals
  The six community capitals represent the different types of assets of a community: infrastructure, natural, financial, human and cultural, social, and political. Accounting for these six dimensions provides a more holistic view of a community’s resilience. The health and well-being of a community and its ability to absorb, recover from, and adapt to adverse events and disasters depends on the resilience of numerous intersecting systems across multiple community capitals.
  

• Social Determinants of Health
  Health inequities are the result of a disproportionate and unjust distribution of social determinants of health (SDHs). SDHs are the “conditions of the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks." Resilience-building efforts that address SDHs can improve conditions, decrease risk and vulnerability, and facilitate positive health outcomes – thus reducing health inequities and ultimately advancing health equity. Examples of SDHs include education, employment, environment, health systems and services, housing, income and wealth, public safety, and transportation.