When the AAMC Center for Health Justice officially launched in 2021 as part of the AAMC Strategic Action Plan, our charge was to “launch the AAMC as a national thought leader in health equity and health justice.”
In hindsight, that is not quite right.
Rather, the charge should have been to launch as a national “thought partner” since, when it comes to health equity, partnership is leadership. That’s because to achieve health equity and ensure all communities have a fair and just opportunity to thrive requires that we keep one foot in community wisdom and multisector partnerships, and the other in a mission to translate evidence into concrete policy and practice change. One individual or one sector cannot do it (or lead it) alone.
So, as I reflect on the Center’s third anniversary, I find myself most proud of our work that fosters collaboration. We have brought together hundreds of research, community, government, clinical, and multisector leaders to identify data gaps and build frameworks to use AI in service of maternal health equity. Our Health Equity Inventory tool helps health systems and universities maximize the impact of their community health and health equity efforts by breaking down internal silos and increasing transparency with community partners. The Principles of Trustworthiness Toolkit speaks community truth to power by laying out how organizations can demonstrate they are worthy of their communities’ trust and partnership.
It’s not just what we’ve produced, though; it’s how we produce it. Across all Center activities, we co-create with our AAMC CHARGE collaborative: a group of nearly 1,700 health equity champions from diverse sectors across the country who colead our efforts to develop research agendas, create scientific opportunities, and inform policy and regulation. To put our values into practice on cross-sector collaboration, we convene and work with our Multisector Partner Group, which advises us across all we do and helps us envision and implement environmental justice as a Center focus.
The process is as important as the product.
And in a short time, that process has proven more successful than we could have imagined. In three years our projects, polling, and research have been cited 180 times by news, advocacy, research, and policy organizations. We have active collaborations with over 48 organizations and have received requests for collaboration from almost 100 organizations across the country. New bridges are being built every day.
Who knows where these bridges will take us? Part of the excitement and beauty of community-engaged multisector work is that there are no best laid plans. You have to be ready to revise in real time, to adjust the timeline, to rip up agendas and follow someone else’s lead, to take three steps back in order to find the right path forward. The promise of the process is that when you arrive, you’ll arrive together — stronger and ready to create sustainable health opportunities that improve the health of all people everywhere.
