Necessary Conversations: Understanding Racism as a Barrier to Achieving Health Equity

• Book Contributors

• Book Contributors

  Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, PhD, Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
  Director, Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

  Shana Bartley, MSPH, Director of Community Partnerships, Income Security and Child Care/Early Learning, National Women’s Law Center

  Susan Beane, MD, Executive Medical Director, Healthfirst

  Robert D. Bullard, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy and Director of Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University

  Beneta D. Burt, MPPA, President and CEO, Mississippi Urban League, Inc.
  

  Nakeitra Burse, DrPH, CHES, CEO, Six Dimensions, LLC

  Juan Cartagena, President and General Counsel, LatinoJustice
  

  Ronda Lee Chapman, Director of Equity, The Trust for Public Land; former Senior Associate, PolicyLink

  Shelby Chestnut, MS, Director of Policy and Programs, Transgender Law Center
  

  Gail C. Christopher, DN, Executive Director, National Collaborative for Health Equity (NCHE); Founder of Ntianu Garden: Center for Healing and Nature; Senior Scholar, Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, George Mason University

  Joia Crear-Perry, MD, FACOG, Founder & President, National Birth Equity Collaborative
  

  Byron D’Andra Orey, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Jackson State University

  Jara Dean-Coffey, MPH, Founder and Director, Equitable Evaluation Initiative; Founder and Principal, Luminare Group

  Crystal Echo Hawk, MA, Executive Director, IllumiNative
  

  An educator who requested anonymity, An American Public School District 

  Madeline England, MIA, Former Community Health Director, Mississippi State Department of Health

  Sherry Glied, PhD, Dean, Professor of Public Service, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University
  

  Solomon Greene, JD, MCP, Senior Fellow, Research to Action Lab and Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute

  Derek M. Griffith, PhD, Co-Founder and Director, Racial Justice Institute; Founder and Director, Center for Men’s Health Equity; Professor of Health Systems Administration and Oncology, Georgetown University
  

  Jennifer Gunter, PhD, Director, South Carolina Collaborative on Race, University of South Carolina

  Charon Gwynn, PhD, Deputy Commissioner, Division of Epidemiology, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
  

  Mark Hall, JD, Director of Health Law and Policy Program, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University 

  Iyanrick John, JD, MPH, Adjunct Professor, California State University, East Bay
  

  Nikole Hannah-Jones, MA, Domestic correspondent, The New York Times 

  Derrick Johnson, JD, President and Chief Executive Officer, NAACP 
  

  Cristy Johnston Limón, MBA, Former Executive Director, Youth Speaks

  Alesha Judkins, Mississippi State Director, Criminal Justice Reform, FWD.us
  

  Pamela Junior, Executive Director, Two Museums Mississippi

  Chris M. Kabel, Senior Fellow, The Kresge Foundation
  

  Donna Ladd, Founding Editor, Mississippi Free Press and Jackson Free Press 

  Nsombi Lambright-Haynes, MPPA, Executive Director, One Voice 
  

  Alana M.W. LeBrón, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Health, Society, and Behavior, Program in Public Health and Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine

  Rukia Lumumba, JD, Founding Executive Director, People’s Advocacy Institute and Electoral Justice CoDirector, Movement for Black Lives
  

  Nyiesha Mallett, Climate Justice Youth Organizer, UPROSE

  Demetria McCain, Esq., President, Inclusive Communities Project
  

  Donna M. Mertens, PhD, Transformative Research and Evaluation; Professor Emeritus, Gallaudet University

  Milena A. Melo, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley  
  

  Nick Mitchell-Bennett, MA, Executive Director, come dream. come build.

  Sean Morales-Doyle, JD, Deputy Director, Voting Rights & Elections, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law

  Julie Morita, MD, Executive Vice President, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  

  Alfredo Ortiz Aragón, PhD, Associate Professor, Dreeben School of Education, University of the Incarnate Word

  Mariana Osoria, MA, Senior Vice President, Partnerships & Engagement, Family Focus 
  

  Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, Senior Project Manager, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium 

  Jason Reece, PhD, Assistant Professor, City and Regional Planning, Ohio State University

  Residents of Cicero, Illinois

  Ed Sivak, Executive Vice President of Policy and Communications, Hope Enterprise Corporation/HOPE Credit Union (HOPE)
  

  Linda Villarosa, MA, Assistant Professor of Media Communication & Arts and Black Studies at the City College of New York and contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine

  Geoff K. Ward, PhD, Professor of African and African-American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis

  Teneasha Washington, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Health Behavior, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  

  Jamal R. Watkins, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Advancement, NAACP

  Primus Wheeler, MS, Executive Director, Jackson Medical Mall Foundation
  

  Thea Williams-Black, PhD, Founder and CEO, GEMS: Growing Educational Minds for Success Consulting LLC and Former Dean of Education, Supervision, and Instruction/Professor of Education, Tougaloo College

The book is organized in three sections:

• Reckoning with Racism
• The Harms of Racial Injustice
• Strategies to Advance Health Equity

• Reckoning with Racism

  Reckoning with racism offers a cohesive framework for recognizing and redressing structural racism. Only by exposing racial hierarchy for what it is—deeply embedded systems and structures that position some people as inherently more valuable than others—can we clear a path for equity.
  
  Chapter 1—Racial Hierarchy, Race Narrative, and the Structures that Sustain Them
  Chapter 2—Beyond the Black/White Binary: Confronting Invisibility and the Harms of “Othering”    
  Chapter 3—Keeping it Real: Pathways to Authentic Connections
  

• The Harms of Racial Injustice

  The harms of racial injustice examine ways people of color are affected by inequity and its accompanying harms. Data and stories bring comparable revelations—from the Black maternal mortality crises to the incarceration epidemic to challenges faced by immigrants, and the dangers that climate change pose—these realities speak to the urgency of dismantling discriminatory systems.
  
  Chapter 4—Structural Racism in Black Maternal Healthcare
  Chapter 5—The Health Harms of Incarceration and Punishment
  Chapter 6—Immigrant Health: Inequity and Fear
  Chapter 7—Climate Crisis, Environmental Justice, and Racial Justice

• Strategies to Advance Health Equity

  Strategies to advance health equity suggests what is possible when we acknowledge and learn from the past, embrace new research and evaluation strategies to measure solutions, elevate the importance of narrative change, and create space for those with lived experiences to drive decisionmaking.
  
  Chapter 8—Learning the Lessons of History
  Chapter 9—Fair Housing, Equitable Communities
  Chapter 10—Transforming Research and Evaluation
  Chapter 11—Racial Justice Through Civic Engagement: A Look at Voting and the Census