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Racial Equity

Creating Systems Change

Systemic racism (as explained in the animated video below) leads to health inequities, which are stark differences in health outcomes based on racial identity (or similar markers, such as zipcode).

The health system, including our mental health system and family-serving systems, are full of barriers to BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) from getting needed services from prevention to crisis. These barriers may be organizational policies, insurance policies, therapy that is not culturally informed or effective, how decisions are made about what happens to Black bodies or where a clinic gets opened, or narratives that label certain behaviors as "bad" but only in certain people.

We need leaders for equity (as discussed in the video below) who are committed to a vision of community where racial identity no longer predicts, in a statistical sense, the quality and outcomes of someone's life.

More resources for you:

  1. Establish an understanding of race equity principles
  2. Engage context experts, the people/stakeholders most impacted by decisions, especially people of color. Specifically, this means more than inviting people to the table, but changing when and where the table is set up, changing how the table is set up, changing how people talk at the table, and valuing the voices of those special guests to the table.
  3. Gather and analyze data that is separated by race (and other factors)
  4. Conduct systems analysis of root causes of inequities
  5. Identify strategies and target resources to address root causes of inequities
  6. Conduct race equity impact assessment for all policies and decision-making
  7. Continuously evaluate effectiveness and adapt strategies - be responsive to needs of communities of color
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