Drawing on COVID-19 lessons and experiences, Prevention Institute partnered with the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC) to explore opportunities and strategies that root public health’s practice in racial justice and health equity. In Centering Racial Justice to Strengthen the Public Health Ecosystem: Lessons from COVID-19, PI and BCHC challenge the public health field to go all in on an ecosystem approach to public health by:

• Insisting on racial justice as the driver for social and structural transformation
• Acknowledging and accounting for the harms that have been caused by centering white dominant culture in public health practice
• Earning and sustaining community trust through actions that allow for healing, authentic community engagement, and meaningful community investments
• Adopting an inclusive and expansive vision of the public health workforce
• Centering community-led priorities and solutions through asset-based approaches that value community leadership and shared decision making.
• Challenging power imbalances and sharing resources by championing direct, lasting funding for community-rooted organizations of color to sustain their work
• Building narrative power to spread narratives of interdependence, abundance, and justice.
• Committing to transparency in how actions and principles of equity, racial justice, and antiracism are operationalized.

Generous support for this project was provided by the Skoll Foundation.

For more information, contact Sana Chehimi at sana@preventioninstitute.org