About
The Prevention Policy Group works in collaboration with partner organizations to advance health equity by advocating for policies and systemic changes that prioritize primary prevention of disease. Our current efforts focus on shaping food policy, securing sustained funding for community-based primary prevention and health equity initiatives, and regulating the emerging cannabis and hemp markets.
Our Programs
Getting it Right from the Start
Our Vision
A society where public policy related to cannabis and other substances protects health and advances equity in all its forms.
Our Mission
We use scientific research to identify and advocate for cannabis policy that advances public health and equity, prioritizing groups vulnerable to harms such as youth. We engage and support partners in our work to ensure that government and industry actions align with these priorities.
Strategies We Use:
- Scientific research
- Policy design
- Technical assistance to government and community partners
- Key audience education
- Community stakeholder engagement
- Advocacy
- Accountability
Food Policy
Nutrition and diet are fundamental building blocks to good health. Since 2014 the Prevention Policy Group has combined research and evidence-based approaches to promote and evaluate food policies through the lens of health equity and social justice that prevent noncommunicable disease and advance healthy diets. Our work has included supporting healthy school food and physical activity environments, advocating for and participating in the successful Bay Area sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes, leading major evaluation research for Berkeley’s first in the nation SSB tax and the San Francisco tax, and supporting the Pan American Health Organization’s childhood obesity, noncommunicable disease prevention, and trans-fat action plans, among others. We are currently collaborating with the Global Health Advocacy Incubator on their work assessing policy options for advancing access to healthy foods.
Medi-Cal Healthy Communities Initiative
Today’s leading causes of premature illness and death are largely preventable. Ensuring access to quality health care is essential for treating those who are already sick; by investing in community-based, primary prevention, we can keep people from needing health care in the first place.
The Medi-Cal Healthy Communities Initiative (MHCI) seeks to identify opportunities and generate support for investing in creating healthy community environments that further advance Medi-Cal’s new approach to reducing the health inequities that have long plagued our state and our nation.
Our recently released policy brief, ““How Can Investing in Community-Based, Primary Prevention Strengthen Medi-Cal?” includes specific recommendations to help Medi-Cal meet its goals of advancing health equity and containing health care costs.
Our fact sheet, “Community-Based, Primary Prevention: Strategies in Action,” showcases examples of effective community-based, primary prevention strategies. Many of these approaches yield a positive financial return on investment. Equally important are strategies that have social returns on investment by reducing risks for the largely preventable health conditions that drive health inequities.
Health Equity and Racial Justice Fund
The Health Equity and Racial Justice Fund (HERJ Fund, formerly the California Alliance for Prevention Funding) seeks to address structural racism and the associated deep-rooted social and health inequities as public health crises in California. The proposed HERJ Fund would create a statewide grant program that provides resources directly to non-profit community-based organizations, clinics, and tribal organizations (CBOs) to fill gaps in state investments by supporting efforts to transform the behaviors, institutions, and systems that disproportionately harm historically marginalized communities and create barriers to health and to opportunity.
California Alliance for Prevention Funding
The California Alliance for Prevention Funding (CAPF) coalition was founded in 2018 and consisted of 20 statewide organizations advocating to establish a California Wellness Trust, or other mechanism, to assure sustained, dedicated investment in preventing the leading causes of illness, injury, and premature death in California by addressing the root causes of these conditions in order to promote greater health equity, build healthier communities through community-based disease prevention and wellness efforts, and make healthcare dollars go further.
CAPF shifted its membership and name in 2021 to respond to inequities that were amplified by COVID-19. Read more about the new coalition, the Health Equity & Racial Justice Fund, above.
Our Team
Our Funders
Thank you to all our current and past funders for their partnership and support.
Contact us today.
Office
2000 Center Street
Suite 308
Berkeley, CA 94704
Hours
Mon-Fri: 9am – 5pm
Via Email
kgonzalez@phi.org
Via Phone
Tel: 510-344-7221