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Many of the recommendations in Fair society, healthy lives have been made in previous reports on health inequalities. I was part of the Marmot review team for a few months and we made a conscious decision not to make a long list of recommendations addressing every single aspect of health inequalities. Instead what the report seeks to do differently is to present health inequalities as a question of fairness and encourage all parts of society to play their part. Health inequalities are traditionally regarded as a problem for the NHS but as this report argues (reflecting the 1998 Acheson report) the NHS is but one player in this task. Tackling health inequalities means addressing the social determinants of health - those factors that shape health and wellbeing such as social environments, the housing and neighbourhoods where people live, education, income, standard of living, occupation and working conditions. Clearly the NHS cannot tackle these issues alone, central and local government departments, the third and private sectors as well as individuals themselves have a role to play. The report makes six wide-ranging recommendations. The primary recommendation is to give every child the best start in life. This means supporting Sure Start programmes, maternity services and parenting programmes so they can better deliver their services to those most in need. A great deal of evidence demonstrates that these programmes lead to long-term improvements in health and education outcomes - cutting these programmes would reverse the progress made in the last 10-15 years. Another recommendation is to create and develop healthy and sustainable places and communities. Those working in planning, transport, housing or environment departments need to work with their colleagues in public health to plan and develop joint strategies and outcomes. The quality of parks, the number of take-aways in an area, road safety - all of these decisions influence how we live our lives and

Organizing Upgrade is an attempt to engage left leaders and innovators in the field of community organizing in a strategic dialogue.  We hope that this project can bring the kind of inspiration, vision and strategic clarity we need to strengthen our political impact, both in our immediate fight and in our longer-term efforts to build the social justice movement and to revitalize a movement-rooted left in the United States.  We hope that, by encouraging some of the leading innovators and leaders from the sphere of community organizing to put pen to paper and to speak their mind, we can develop unity and clarity about the key demands on left organizers in these times.

Collaboration Multiplier is an interactive framework and tool for analyzing collaborative efforts across fields. It is designed to guide an organization to a better understanding of which partners it needs and how to engage them, or to facilitate organizations that already work together in identifying activities to achieve a common goal, identify missing sectors that can contribute to a solution, delineate partner perspectives and contributions, and leverage expertise and resources.

The country faces enormous challenges. PublicAgenda.org is designed to provide citizens and leaders with the tools they need to tackle them. You'll be able to get the critical facts, consider the choices and current public opinion, and learn new ways to work together on fundamental problems facing the country. Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to strengthen our democracy's capacity to take on tough issues.

It's designed to give you and your team an at-a-glance look at the ingredients of advocacy efforts. It can guide you to clarify the elements of your own campaign: goals and impacts; audience; what you bring to your campaign; the activities and tactics you're planning for; and benchmarks along the way to your goals. As you click on your choices in each area, you will see your campaign strategy come into focus. And you'll get some clues about how to gauge your progress and make improvements.

"tools and techniques to guide practitioners, funders and evaluators as they develop and articulate their theories of change. We have also helped to clarify concepts, indicators and measures of "community building" such as civic and community capacity. More recently, the Roundtable has emphasized the learning dimensions of evaluation, advocating for evaluations to be structured so as to maximize their potential to build field-level knowledge about community change."

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION LAUNCHES NEW COURSE ON SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH The course consists of an online tutorial with four learning units that making connections between health, and equity, social justice and human rights. It is intended to provide insight on the social determinants of health in order to encourage changes in policy that promote and protect the health of a population. The course is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and is targeted to WHO staff members and other health ministry officials but is free to access and fully available to the public.

The e-book includes summaries of recently completed research reports as well as the best and most policy-relevant published articles from scholarly journals. The chapters have been edited to keep them at a length of 3,000 to 9,000 words and to ensure that they are accessible to a non-specialist audience. Each chapter is a separate dowloadable PDF.

The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free resource to help you choose programs and policies to improve health and prevent disease in your community.

Alternative Index to GDP for Measuring Opportunity & Progress Launching Nov. 10 The American Human Development Project, a nonpartisan initiative of the Social Science Research Council, seeks to move beyond an overreliance on GDP as a measure of well-being, today released The Measure of America 2010-2011: Mapping Risks and Resilience (foreword by economist Jeffrey Sachs). The report is the latest update to the pioneering American Human Development (HD) Index, first introduced in The Measure of America 2008-2009.

The high quality video resources in this collection are, themselves, testimony to the richness, diversity, dynamism and universality of the African American experience. They provide valuable historical, cultural, political and sociological chronicles about the people and events that have shaped America from slavery to present day. This comprehensive perspective provides a powerful context to understand current issues of race and prejudice.

Globalization As neoliberal policies continue to exacerbate poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation, the films in our globalization collection allow viewers to confront the harsh--and often hidden--conditions faced by those on the losing end of the dominant economic paradigm, as well as a framework for analyzing the forces shaping those conditions. They offer an alternative to the mainstream media coverage, reminding us that a different trajectory is not only possible but imperative.

The CIW is a community-based worker organization. Our members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. We strive to build our strength as a community on a basis of reflection and analysis, constant attention to coalition building across ethnic divisions, and an ongoing investment in leadership development to help our members continually develop their skills in community education and organization.

The Building Movement Project works to strengthen the role of US nonprofit organizations as sites of democratic practice and to advance ways nonprofits can significantly contribute to building movement for progressive social change.

If you needed to get a quick breakfast snack and a coffee drink, would you choose Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks? Give us your opinion here http://www.yobmob.com/ifyoucould/public/question/viewdetail/181

If you needed to get a quick breakfast snack and a coffee drink, would you choose Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks? Give us your opinion here http://www.yobmob.com/ifyoucould/public/question/viewdetail/181

Poverty is the single greatest threat to individual human development and it simultaneously creates profound social disruption in the United States and around the world. Unless institutions and citizens take steps now to reduce and prevent poverty--and the growing inequality that deepens and widens its damaging repercussions--we will face a nightmarish future that can be measured in untold numbers of destroyed lives, communities, and institutions.