Recent Events & Features
“Health as a Human Right: Power Building for Community-Driven Change”
In the third episode of our podcast series, Critical Futures, Dr. Ruqaiijah Yearby talks to Xavier Morales from the Praxis Project along with his community partner Judith LeBlanc from Native Organizers Alliance about leveraging community partnerships to drive change and realize health as a human right.
Report Spotlight
Over 300 localities have started addressing racism and its impacts on health by acknowledging that racism is a public health crisis. Building on the first report, this report discusses the health impacts of racism, local governmental responses, and recommendations for responding to racism as a public health crisis.
Declaring racism as a public health crisis is an important first step. Doing so acknowledges that racism exists and that government has a duty to dismantle the system of racism, instead of leaving the burden on individual victims of racism to file lawsuits. This is a critical shift in how to see racism and craft solutions to address it. Yet a declaration, without more, is not enough.
Until now, no one has cataloged jurisdictions working with racial equity tools created by national organizations. In this report, we begin filling this gap by identifying jurisdictions working with racial equity tools and discuss how they are addressing systemic racism and the social determinants of health in their communities.
Wage Pass-Through Report
Direct Care Workers, COVID-19, and Pay Inequities
COVID-19 has revealed inequities for health care workers of color, especially direct care workers. Many of these direct care workers are not covered under COVID-19 economic relief bills and wage pass-through laws could help provide additional pay.
Webinars

Stopping the Trend
Discussing existing long-standing health inequities and their relationship to COVID-19 outline solutions and action steps that can be taken to stop the trend.
Stopping the Trend

Healing Justice Approaches to
Self and Community Care
Highlighting exacerbated systemic inequities that disproportionately impact the lives of people of color and practitioners with innovative approaches to healing justice.
Healing Justice Approaches to
Self and Community Care

COVID-19 Vaccines
With racial and ethnic disparities amid COVID-19, how can the approval and distribution of vaccines be handled to ensure that inequities are not further exacerbated?
COVID-19 Vaccines

Humanizing Equity
Humanizing equity is an approach to equity work that ensures the most marginalized people are the face of the solution and not the problem.
Humanizing Equity

Equity in Education
Equity in education was a concern long before COVID-19. We explore strategies that are showing promise and the innovation that will guide future practices.
Equity in Education

Community Drivers to Equitable Solutions
To achieve equity in health, it must be defined by communities who are most affected by social and economic inequities.
Community Drivers to Equitable Solutions

Employment and Health
COVID-19 has shown how employment not only limits an individual’s ability to adopt healthy behaviors, but also increases exposure and susceptibility to disease.
Employment and Health

Practitioners and advocates discussed grassroots organizing strategies to advocate against injustices during this a pandemic.

A COVID-19 conversation with Matthew Cortland from Netroots Nation.

Efforts to virtually catalog the art created to mobilize people to take action in solidarity with the movement for Black Lives and ignite conversation around art & activism.

An American Journal of Bioethics webinar on Black Bioethics about racism, police brutality, and what it means for black health.

Exploring structural discrimination and how the CARES Act and HEROES Act are working (or not) to address disproportional burdens for communities of color.

The third webinar in APHA’s Advancing Racial Equity series explored various perspectives for reimagining policing and public safety.

A 30-minute conversation defining the difference between structural and institutional racism and solutions to address or mitigate structural racism in health care and employment.

COVID-19 has raised a plethora of ethical issues – from prevention and containment, to cure and management. Leading ethics experts discuss these issues in a Webinar series focused on ethics and COVID-19.
Media
A disproportionate number of the 500,000 Americans who have died of coronavirus are Black. Yet African Americans and other people of color have struggled to access vaccines. Covid-19 missteps contribute to a nightmare all too familiar to Black communities and other communities of color.
Healing justice must breathe life back into our communities with structural changes that eliminate barriers to access. Now is the time to establish an understanding of healing justice, a concept which incorporates healing as a component of social justice and racial equity.
Through a community-led grantmaking process, the St. Louis Regional Racial Healing Fund will support efforts to develop capacity and infrastructure in the racial justice movement to
envision, articulate, and create a transformed St. Louis region through community organizing and healing arts.
Too often Black and Brown St. Louisans, people of color, don’t have power over the resources for community healing, justice, and transformation. The Racial Healing + Justice Fund makes it a priority that residents who are directly affected by racial inequity are the ones who design the strategy and govern the investment of the funds into the community.
Through research, training, community engagement and public policy development, the Institute will help build equitable communities by assessing and promoting best practices that foster healing from social injustice, trauma and oppression.
Four faculty members at Saint Louis University recently united to help build a more equitable community in which “race, gender, class and other social identity categories can no longer predict life outcomes, and outcomes for all groups are improved.
Dr. Keon Gilbert (IHJE Director of Equity & Policy) joins the Health Promotion Practice Journal podcast to discuss race, racism, and antiracism. Follow the link below to hear Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Jones dissect key definitions; explore national patterns; and offer strategies for reshaping institutions and for exploring the possibilities of intergenerational bridging.
Dr. Yearby (IHJE Director of Community Research Ethics) had her work recognized by Health Affairs, a leading journal of health policy research. Her article, “Structural Racism in Historical and Modern US Health Care Policy” made the journal’s countdown of the most-read articles of 2022. In addition, her episode of A Health Podyssey podcast was featured in their countdown of the best episodes of the year.
As part of Brookings Institution’s coverage of the 2023 State of the Union Address, Dr. Keon Gilbert along with Carly Bennett and Patrick Edwards consider the ramifications of ending the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency — and consider possible paths towards health equity in its wake.
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