The two overarching goals for the public health community in the United States are to: 1) increase quality and years of healthy life and 2) eliminate health disparities; and current evidence suggests that improving graduation rates to reduce health disparities may be more cost effective than investing in medical care ….

SOPHE recognizes that the health and well-being of communities, and the individuals that comprise them, is dependent on the physical, social, environmental, and economic factors present in these communities and that communities of people that are under-resourced and under-represented, in which health inequities are most evident . . .