HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Huntsville is a prosperous area, with prosperous things going on, but that prosperity isn’t as widespread as it could be to benefit the full citizenship.

There are equity gaps, or areas where that prosperity hasn’t made it to everyone.

Following the death of George Floyd, Reverend Frank Broyles, a community pastor who spent years as a church pastor working with the interfaith mission service, was inspired to address racial equality issues. So he went to the Huntsville Human Relations Commission and suggested they look at racial equality through the lens of research on inclusive prosperity.

Reverend Broyles joins Leadership Perspectives to discuss his multi-year research project on equity gaps in Huntsville, titled “Pathways to Inclusive Prosperity: Narrowing Equity Gaps.” After years of research, the data that was found as a result of that project is ready to be released.

“We did research for a year and a half and came up with what we called 13 metrics that you can use to measure how inclusive you are with prosperity. We are prosperous in this area, we’ve got great things going on, but prosperity is not as wide as it could be to benefit the full citizenship,” said Broyles.

The research project looked at the equity gaps in household income, unemployment rate, asset poverty rate, liquid asset poverty rate, households with zero net worth, etc. But, there were some discernable and major equity gaps the study considered as “focus indicators.”

Broyles and the task force that helped put this all together will now shift their focus to public awareness and how the data can be used to narrow equity gaps. It will take engagement from the citizens in these communities to enact that change.

“Public awareness is created in a variety of ways. The task force that helped me put this together, and met with me this past week evaluated what’s next. We’ve got enough solid data, how do we go about developing a campaign in the community and who’s going to lead that community?” Broyles said. “Right now it’s a task force of people from the community, but it’s not the responsibility of the human relations commission or the office of diversity, equity and inclusion. They will be a part of it, but citizens engaged from the ground up will help put together power points, presentations for rotary clubs, meetings with particular groups, churches, faith communities that want to be involved…”

Reverend Broyles discusses some of those equity gaps and the data that resulted from the project in the full Leadership Perspectives interview, which you can watch in the video player at the top of this page.

For more information on the project, you can contact the researchers at Ipphsv@gmail.com.