Apartheid has made an ugly return—actually, in the world of healthcare, it never left. Instead, it just has a new shape. Dr. Somava Saha, Founder and CEO of Well-being and Equity (WE) in the World, suggests that while we no longer have colored waiting rooms, we have something similar: national healthcare that makes it difficult for marginalized communities to access necessary care. However, collaborative organizations like Just Leaders for a Just Health System, or JUSTICE SQUARED, just might be the key to dissolving this discriminatory infrastructure.
WE in the World is a multiracial organization built to combat systemic injustice. Dr. Saha’s mission, as well as WE in the World’s, is to advance intergenerational well-being with the development of a racially and economically just social framework. By working with thousands of changemakers across the globe, WE in the World has raised over 27 million dollars to help communities in need and created more than 3,000 jobs in communities of color. On October 24th, with assistance from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, WE in World took another step toward accomplishing its goal of social equity with the launch of JUSTICE SQUARED.
Apply and get involved
JUSTICE SQUARED is a two-year collaborative program that aims to create a network of healthcare organizations, patients and community leaders who are dedicated to creating a less structurally divisive healthcare system. To join the JUSTICE SQUARED team, organizations and communities must fill out the online application. After applying and being accepted, healthcare organizations are given access to a database of relevant racial statistics, plus a two-year grant of $300,000. The program hopes to nurture trustworthy partnerships that can be used as the foundation for necessary changes in healthcare policies and practices alike.
Eligible participants include teams from healthcare organizations and associated patient and community leaders who show proven dedication to creating tangible, structural changes in healthcare, starting in their respective organizations and communities. Applications opened on October 29th, 2024, and are due by January 15th, 2025.
Apartheid in our healthcare
As it stands right now, our medical system is critically unjust and demands some sort of change Without one, our healthcare can’t be expected to stabilize communities and will instead continue to:
- Widen the racial wealth gap through an unjust spread of medical debt (NCLC)
- Throttle the quality and access to healthcare services for minorities based on a historic system of redlining (Urban.org)
- Drastically influence living situations and standard of living due to accumulating medical bills (NPR)
Structural racism within America is everywhere, even in the tiniest crevices of healthcare. Because of this, a service that is based on the philosophy of helping everyone ends up helping almost everyone, or a selective everyone. The healthcare policies responsible for this aren’t designed to treat the cause of health issues. Instead, they treat the symptoms; meanwhile, the nation’s systemic issues continue to put people of color at major health risk.
“If we left this issue to itself, we’d be paying for a healthcare system that’s fixing broken people rather than one that’s stabilizing people in communities. Our health care system will be part of what’s causing harm,” says Dr. Saha.
Addressing and transforming our healthcare’s roots in racism can be the difference between Black Americans getting life-saving operations or not. The threshold for certain operations—such as a kidney transplant—depend on muscle mass. “Somehow, people decided that, on average, Black people have more muscle mass and that the threshold for them to get a transplant should be different,” Dr. Saha says. Because of this, tens of thousands of people are being excluded from necessary procedures, all because race is considered a measure in healthcare.
How we can change the narrative
Our healthcare policies are founded on social injustice. If we want to move the healthcare industry toward positive change, we need to replace the framework that those policies rest on by creating new, non-discriminatory policies, such as policies that prohibit discriminating on the basis of race or policies that incorporate language assistance services at no extra cost to patients (HHS).
JUSTICE SQUARED centers itself around this philosophy, pulling inspiration from successful changes that came before it. For example, strides like the National Kidney Foundation’s policies that removed race as a diagnostic influence have been proven to work in the fight again injustice. These new policies allowed roughly 14,000 more Black patients to receive kidney transplants between the months of January and March in 2023 (PBS).
Similarly, Healthcare Anchor Network has started to establish locations in districts that still suffer from the practice of redlining. In doing so, they actively work against the marginalization of these communities by supplying access to healthcare in places that were traditionally overlooked.
Transforming or outright replacing discriminatory policies has been proven to work. We don’t have to tear down healthcare itself to correct these injustices. Dr. Saha agrees. “This isn’t about public policy versus business. It’s about all of us using our power to reshape the system, to advocate for enabling policies.”
WE means YOU and I
In the fight against systematic injustice, uniting the leading healthcare organizations is certainly important, but JUSTICE SQUARED can’t push back the tide by only turning to the industry. What they need is the broader community—soldiers in the field like us. “The most vital thing that we can do is to be in community together,” says Dr. Saha.
Anybody who receives healthcare can join the initiative against injustice. JUSTICE SQUARED is designed to not only bring influential leaders in the industry together, but also to hear from patients who have received healthcare to build data on where our nation’s systems are weak and where they succeed. With help from patients of healthcare, even if it’s just a story about a bad experience, JUSTICE SQUARED can identify key issues, pitch new policies and mobilize a solution. It’s a collective against injustice in healthcare, meaning everybody gets a voice.
“These are not technical things. These are actually about how we create a just system, and we cannot do that without the broader nation, knowing, seeing, caring, and being willing to move policies for justice forward. That takes all of us.”
Want to share your experience? Don’t hesitate!
Whether you’ve experienced systematic racism firsthand or know a friend who has, you can sign up here to become one of many motivated changemakers. Even if your experiences aren’t wholly negative, JUSTICE SQUARED still encourages you to join the community to receive updates, learning opportunities and tools.
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