The Four Pillars

Creating Health Equity and Racial Health Justice in our Lifetime

The new National Racial Health Justice Center focuses on equitable recovery from the pandemic and its economic aftermath so that they emerge with resilient new communities that honor, protect and create racial health justice through four pillars.

Pillar One: New National Action Lab

The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how fast we can move when we all decide an issue is a national crisis. The new National Racial Health Justice Action Lab treats health equity as an emergency to speed progress towards racial health equity and justice for everyone. The Action Lab is practitioner-focused and works to:

Increase the spread of ideas quickly.
Create the political, financial, and relationship conditions needed for successful implementation.
Provide health practitioners creative time and sabbaticals to create the next generation of practice.

With generous support from our founding funders, the National Lab pilots in California in 2023 and will expand to 47 cities nationwide by 2024.

Pillar Two: A Federal Health Equity for All Act

We can end health disparities by creating communities designed for health.

Community coalitions, cultural business associations, and equity-focused government officials are essential to re-making our community for better health. Unfortunately, community-based public health and government equity specialists are haphazardly funded and are not able to invest in communities as strategically or efficiently as they would like to.

The Federal Health Equity Act will create the long-term, durable funding needed to turn community health coalitions and government equity activities into a system that can correct unhealthy living conditions and create communities of care.

The Act was modeled after the Ryan White CARE Act, which created national funding and sparked nationwide innovations in treating and reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. The Federal Health Equity Act will help communities build the capacity to save lives and transform health justice by responding faster to new information, learning from previous successes, and creating more conditions for innovation.

The Federal Health Equity Act coalition is forming now, with community-based organizations and national health equity advocates beginning to sketch out the details together.

Pillar Three: A Black Health-Wealth Equity Agenda

Over 220 jurisdictions in over 30 states have passed Racism as a Public Health Crisis declarations. With once in a generation levels of federal investment, it’s time to reverse one of our country’s most ensuring differences in life expectancy.

Black health disparities and differences in life expectancies are among the most pervasive and heartbreaking vestiges of slavery and the discrimination that continues to follow. As a country, we are currently working to set laws that prevent new, insidious forms of discrimination to emerge–but we continue to see racism reappear. Its time to both repair the damage from past discrimination and support government to better prevent new forms of discrimination that impacts the health of Black communities and creates life expectancy gaps in the first place.

We will use the “Racism as a Public Health Crisis Agenda” as a tool to reduce the decade-long difference in life expectancy experienced by Black people.

Our Black Health-Wealth Equity Agenda focuses on the following strategic investments to improve Black health and wellness outcomes:

A Model For the Nation: The Regional Black Housing Fund – a $500 million housing fund to interrupt Black displacement and build Black economic power.
A Connecting Strategy For Black Communities: The Black Meccas Project – a network of Black-led organizations supporting Black health and wealth and preparing communities for reparations.
Communities Designed For Our Health: New Communities from The Ground-Up – a project to create new communities designed from the start for Black health and wellness.

Pillar Four: The Next Generation of Regional Public Health Practice

Regional collaboration matters. Conditions that impact a person’s health, such as housing affordability, an economy that puts people first, public safety and crime prevention, all happen at the regional level. Having regional experts that know each other and plan together makes an impact.

It’s time to create the next generation of public health practice that factors in the power of regional networks. This would include an approach that:

Develops systems for public health departments to increase impact and reduce costs.
Creates momentum for government to become part of the solution.
Helps community coalitions establish change at the community level.