Recommendations by Application

Public Engagement

Use of EOA maps can proactively engage the community around emerging issues. Participants in many workshops identified opportunities to leverage resources in public engagement, especially in outreach to areas of the community affected by multiple investments.

Policies

The EOA process highlighted many community core values, especially those held in common by many community stakeholder agencies and organizations. Alignment of these goals could help and be helped by opening lines of communication across disciplines. Additionally, developing common language can help cross‐disciplinary communication, allowing stakeholders to understand the nuances of equity issues, especially as factors compound and influence choices of residents in this region.

Plans

A high‐level application of the EOA's findings identifies a shift in conventional process, enhancing the paradigm of how we plan. Many organizations have begun to shift towards consideration of triple bottom‐line principles, making equity a core planning value. This will immediately help LLC efforts around scenario planning. Participants were interested in applying EOA data to the work they do through agency and organizational planning.

Investments

EOA data can provide a finer grain of context to decision‐makers as they strategically allocate funding resources throughout the region. Investments can help those residents disproportionately affected by policy decisions achieve greater access to areas of higher opportunity, as well as make "good" geographic areas "great."

Leveraging Resources

EOA data and findings offer critical information to support grant applications by public and nonprofit organizations. Many partners have commented on the time spent searching for such information and the difficulty of piecing together data from a variety of sources. The EOA offers a one‐stop shop for grant seekers and also helps to raise awareness of the data resources and information that is available.