12/05/2025
“AP (Alonzo Plough) : That was when public health workers first teamed up with community leaders to share health information in local barbershops and beauty salons and social clubs. It’s common now, but it was a bold idea then: bringing epidemiology out of the ivory tower and into real neighborhoods to stop disease before it starts.
In those days, too, we couldn’t use words like “equity” much—much less talk about racism in healthcare. Instead, we talked about “risk” and “diminished futures.”
GC (Gail Christopher) : We used "place" as a safer word for "race," because it was clear that the neighborhoods people lived in shaped their health in major ways. Naming race wasn't acceptable then, so we talked about people's place in a system that assigned different values to different groups. Some neighborhoods had everything people needed to be healthy, and others did not, and that difference wasn't accidental.
AP: Exactly! And that led those of us in philanthropy to develop the message that your ZIP code is more important to your health than your genetic code. That was the bridge language that we used to address structural and racial determinants of health.”
Written by Gail Christopher, National Collaborative for Health Equity & Alonzo Plough, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Public health has helped Americans live longer, healthier lives and good data has always made that possible. Even today, as data and science face mounting challenges, public health c
