Reaffirming Our Shared Vision

What a time we are in. The Trump administration’s vicious retrenchment on the policies, progress, and words of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has severe consequences for health in America. 

These efforts directly attack policies to boost healthcare coverage, lower drug prices, address infectious diseases, and more. Every executive action brimming with cruelty and falsehoods erodes long-needed progress and threatens our shared vision. The onslaught of attacks is intentionally chaotic, disorienting, and divisive. Yet, we’ve seen all this before.

As multiracial crowds marched during the Civil Rights movement to preserve the soul of our nation, segregationists met them with harassment and fatal violence. So-called allies met them with cruel silence and withering indifference. The LGBTQ+ community faced similar discrimination and hatred during the AIDS epidemic, when communities united to save lives after public health leaders turned them away. In the face of multiplying anti-abortion laws, leaders built the reproductive justice movement to ensure women had control over their bodies and access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare. 

These moments teach us something: When inspired by a shared vision and hope for a better future, we can marshal enduring resilience and strategic defiance to confront and overcome the assaults on our health and wellbeing. This gives us hope at RWJF. It also gives us a mandate. And even amid the swirling uncertainty, blistering attacks, and pervasive untruths, we cannot and will not abandon our mandate.

So, we at RWJF recommit ourselves to creating a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. We recommit our institution to joining you in paving a path to that shared future—no matter how difficult the times. And we rededicate ourselves to taking bold leaps even in the face of hostility and obstruction. 

As I shared in November, the long haul toward advancing health equity requires more than just words, it requires action. But words do matter. A lot. Since the election, we have used our voice to lift up our common vision of health and wellbeing for all families in this nation. We have also spoken against the obstructions and obstructors trying to prevent that vision from becoming real. And we have highlighted the body of evidence that articulates the need for, and pathway toward, the future we all want to see. 

We will keep speaking in the media, online, behind closed doors, and any place we are invited. The barriers to generational health for all communities are not going away. Therefore, neither can our willingness to speak up.  

We are deeply grateful for those of you who have taken the time to share your feedback with us about how our messages have resonated.

We remain focused on partnering with you in 2025, as we work toward enduring, generational goals that will improve life for all in America: to transform health in our lifetime through economic inclusion for families; to demand and build health and healthcare systems that treat everyone with dignity and respect; and to create equitable community conditions that provide everyone with what they need to thrive. This work does not start at our Princeton headquarters—it starts with you. 

Heather McGhee, the author of “The Sum of Us,” speaks powerfully about something she calls the solidarity dividend. The solidarity dividend is the opposite of how many people think about racial progress in America, which is, unfortunately, the belief that lifting barriers for some limits opportunity for all. In fact, the solidarity dividend stresses that when we lift barriers for some, we can improve health for all. 

In this effort, community leaders are indispensable voices, strategists, and advocates who bring positive and lasting change. Because of this, in 2020 we invested $90 million in community power, acknowledging that those closest to the problems where they live are also closest to the solutions. We are prioritizing these types of investments because we know how they support building long-term, sustainable influence across the country. Our work to fortify power building efforts continues.

RWJF is also bolstering our support for courageous, innovative leaders in the health professions—increasing our investments toward a diverse healthcare workforce by 60 percent over the next three years. We directed this support toward academic institutions that have significantly advanced diversity in the health professions, such as Minority Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, along with other efforts. 

Every day, bad actors manipulate facts, twist reality, and outright lie, just to arrest our nation’s progress toward health equity. In the face of this, we need to communicate clear, cohesive, and consequential evidence-based knowledge and community-guided wisdom about health equity. And we need to do it quickly. This year, RWJF is supporting efforts like Health Equity Works, a communications operation that will advance health equity narratives through proactive communications strategies and aggressive rapid response.  

Beyond that, RWJF supports thousands of organizations and networks working to advance our generational goals—dozens of whom are specifically focused on the emerging and sustained legal threats to racial diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

People in America are clear: They want affordable, high-quality healthcare, economic stability for families, and healthy and thriving communities in which safe housing is within reach. RWJF will continue to partner with you to realize these bold and achievable goals. No matter what comes.

Many of you have for decades worked relentlessly to build a healthier, more equitable future for everyone. Along the way, you have modeled building relationships and community that affirm joy amid challenges to that future. In these days of backlash and backsliding, we at RWJF must match that commitment and resolve to transform health in our lifetime through supporting and growing communities that share our values. We will. 

Last year, my RWJF colleagues and I benefited tremendously from listening to key leaders who shared their post-election insights with us in Princeton. Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, summed it up clearly: “In this moment, when our path to liberation is so much harder, we must not give up.”

During that same meeting, Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of NDN Collective, said that those who carried the torch of progress before us created “beautiful stories that got to be told because we got to the other side. There’s beauty in our resistance and the relationships forged in this time will build the foundation for the future.” 

As we muster the courage to build what America can and must be, we can ground ourselves in the vitality of our powerful relationships with one another. We can ground ourselves in our mutual love of humanity, and our insistence not just on surviving this time, but thriving through our partnership. We can ground ourselves in knowing the actions we take now, together, will fuel us for the long road ahead—and lay a durable foundation for future generations.

It is our honor to be on this path with you.

With gratitude,

Richard Besser, MD

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