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Spotlight
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.
Amid a growing national conversation on equity and social justice, city and county governments are using tools to identify racial and ethnic disparities in their communities and inform the development and implementation of new laws and policies.
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
The Color of COVID:
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.
Black Americans are dying at higher rates compared to others diagnosed with COVID-19. This disparity points to systemic inequalities related to neighborhoods, housing, access and use of health care services, and the burden of chronic disease within black communities. Scholars, activists, and community leaders discuss the existing inequalities contributing to long standing health inequities and their relationship to COVID-19 outline solutions and action steps that can be taken to stop the trend.
Facilitated by Keon Gilbert, DrPH, co-founder of Institute for Healing Justice and Equity
Panelists: Melody Goodman, NYU; Rashawn J. Ray, David M. Rubenstein Fellow at The Brookings Institute and University of Maryland; Brian Smedley, American Psychological Association; Dr. Oliver Brooks, National Medical Association.
The Color of COVID:
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 is the practice of community and self-care that takes into consideration the stresses and trauma of oppression. COVID-19 has highlighted and exacerbated systemic inequities that disproportionately impact the lives of people of color, and this panel highlights practitioners who have taken innovative approaches to healing justice before and during the pandemic.
Facilitated by Kira Banks, PhD, co-founder of Institute for Healing Justice and Equity
Panelists: Emanuel Brown, Strategies for Freedom; Brittini Gray, Healer and Activist; Farzana Khan, Healing Justice London; Nkem Ndefo, Lumos Transforms; Venus Evans-Winters, Illinois State University.
The Color of COVID:
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?
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare inequities in American society. Not only are there racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infections and deaths, but also the pandemic has exacerbated the economic inequities suffered by the poor and middle class. As the federal and state government, Moderna, Pfizer/BioNtech, and AzstraZeneca/Oxford rush to approve and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, they must ensure that it doesn’t cause further inequities.
Facilitated by Keon Gilbert, DrPH, co-founder of Institute for Healing Justice and Equity
Panelists: Ana Santos Rutschman, S.J.D, Saint Louis University School of Law; Harald Schmidt, MA, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Perelmen School of Medicine; Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D., M.P.H., Saint Louis University School of Law
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.
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