Healing Through Policy: Creating Pathways to Racial Justice.

Across the country, there is growing acknowledgment of the impact of racism on the health of individuals and communities. Through resolutions, executive orders, and other mechanisms, many local leaders are declaring racism a public health crisis and are committing to addressing systemic health and racial inequities. Leaders are exploring the policies and practices that are most needed to move from commitment to action and how to best use policy to effect meaningful change toward health, racial equity, and justice.

Launched in October 2021, Healing Through Policy: Creating Pathways to Racial Justice is an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and the National Collaborative for Health Equity, in collaboration with Results for America.

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Healing Through Policy.

Dr. Gail C. Christopher

Policy & Practice Briefs.

Narrative Change

The Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation implementation guide says the concept of narrative change refers to the fact that “The human brain is hardwired to capture stories and associated images to construct conscious and implicit meaning and beliefs. Stories make up our individual and collective narratives about reality. Achieving racial equity and healing from the trauma of centuries of legal, institutional and structured racial hierarchy requires transforming our experiences, stories and understandings about the equal and inherent value of all humanity.”

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Racial Healing

Racial Healing & Relationship Building

The TRHT framework defines “to heal” as to restore to wholeness, to repair damage, and to set right. Healing a societal racial divide requires acknowledging the wrongs of the past, while also addressing the consequences of those wrongs. Racial healing involves focusing on ways for all of us to heal from the wounds of the past, to build mutually respectful relationships across racial and ethnic lines that honor and value each person’s humanity, and to build trusting intergenerational and diverse community relationships that better reflect our common humanity. Racial healing is about building relationships, connecting people, and expanding the circles of engagement needed for overcoming racial hierarchy and building political will.

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Separation

Separation

The belief in a hierarchy of human value is sustained by keeping people apart. In cutting off Indigenous people from their rights to self-governance and controlling access to such basic resources as food and water, colonization is the original form of separation, and it serves to benefit white society. Within the TRHT Framework, separation is defined as the division of groups based on a particular characteristic, including race and/or socioeconomic status.

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Law

Law

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” the preamble of the Declaration of Independence asserts. As the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation TRHT Design Team acknowledges, “Unfortunately, the “certain unalienable Rights” and “Liberty” was not meant for those whose basic humanity had long been denied by the founders.”

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Economy

Economy

For centuries, people of color in the United States have been denied equal access to Resources and opportunities. From the forcible displacement of Indigenous people, to the enslavement and exploitation of Black Americans, to the historic and present-day exclusion of immigrant groups and exploitation of people of color in the workforce, inequity is created and sustained in U.S. economic policies and practices.

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