Ethnic and racial health disparities present an enduring challenge to community-based
health promotion, which rarely targets their underlying population-level determinants
(e.g., poverty, food insecurity, health care inequity). We present a novel 3-lens prescription
for using community organizing to treat these determinants in communities
of color based on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Communities Creating
Healthy Environments initiative, the first national project to combat childhood obesity
in communities of color using community organizing strategies. The lenses—Social
Justice, Culture–Place, and Organizational Capacity–Organizing Approach—assist
health professional–community partnerships in planning and evaluating community
organizing–based health promotion programs. These programs activate community
stakeholders to alter their community’s disease-causing, population-level determinants
through grassroots policy advocacy, potentially reducing health disparities affecting
communities of color. (Am J Public Health. 2016;106:79–86. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.