Addressing a room of more than a dozen local health directors from around the state, Harp said while it’s critical to focus our efforts on what causes people to get sick in the first place, it’s also important to note that when “we talk about prevention we are talking about blaming the victims for their behaviors.”

“We should be talking about conditions that influence those behaviors,” Harp said.

For example, “In low-income neighborhoods dominated by liquor outlets and convenient stores they also often lack healthy food options. In many of our inner cities there aren’t even supermarkets,” Harp said. She said we need to ask ourselves: “Do they have access to nutritious food?”

“If we fail to recognize that community conditions frame individual behaviors and actions, we will never, never truly address health inequities,” she said.

Harp promised Thursday to “actually fund what comes from this project.”

Last year the legislature created a 32-member Commission on Health Equity to eliminate disparities in health status based on race, ethnicity, and linguistic ability. Harp said Thursday that there was no funding in the budget for the commission, but appointments to the commission by leadership in both parties and the governor’s office are being made. She said she expects that over the next few months the commission will hold an organizational meeting and determine what kind of staff it needs. She said she hopes to find the money to fund the commission in next year’s budget.

The Commission on Health Equity is completely separate from the Health Equity Index project.