CCHE’s commitment to addressing systemic racism

At CCHE, we join our communities in mourning the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many others across our country. CCHE stands in solidarity with people in this country who have experienced injustice for far too long. CCHE recognizes that police violence against black, indigenous, and people of color is a symptom of deeply rooted institutionalized racism and a systemic problem that we cannot ignore.

In quality improvement work we often talk about how “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” The painful reality is that our systems are achieving exactly what they were designed to do—protect the privileged at the expense of everyone else.  Racism is a well-documented, well-researched public health crisis, and we at CCHE have a responsibility to speak up and be part of the solution. Community leaders and advocates have tried for decades to mend our systems, and that’s not working; we need to dismantle and rebuild these systems if we want to truly interrupt institutional racism at its source.

CCHE is committed to equity and we believe that equity needs to be at the center of all public health and health care investments if we want to improve the health and well-being of everyone. As evaluators, we recognize that we have power and influence to advance the conversation and prompt action to rebuild more equitable and just systems. We recognize that while we don’t have the answers for the best way to do this work, we haven’t pushed ourselves and our partners enough to think about and prioritize equity. We will make mistakes as we try to do better at living our values— knowing it will be difficult and awkward at times does not mean we should choose not to act.

We are committed to deepening our reflection, learning, and efforts to use our power and privilege to name the inequity and racism that we see in the systems around us and contribute to building more just systems. In our evaluation work we will:

• More systematically incorporate Equitable Evaluation and anti-racist principles
• Reflect on where we are falling short and turn our realizations in concrete actions
• Work harder to elevate voices that are not being heard and incorporate their views and values into decision making and implementation of projects intended to improve community health
• Consider whose questions we are answering in our evaluations and explore alternative perspectives
• Build capacity for collection and disaggregation of data to better understand impact of inequitable systems on different segments of the community
• Advocate for evaluation plans that serve the communities intended to benefit from community health projects and initiatives

We have a lot of work to do. It won’t be easy, and we are grateful for our community health partners going forward.