The NYC Coalition to Dismantle Racism in the Health System is an inter-sectional, cross-functional collaboration among the medical community, community-based organizations, the public health community, and the legal sector in New York City to begin to address racism — personally mediated, internalized, and structural — which is itself is the primary driver of health inequities. This Department of Health-supported, action-oriented collective consists of more than thirty member organizations and eight working groups. To reflect on the many ways - conscious and unconscious, obvious and hidden - that we all contribute to the inequities of racism and bias.
2. To raise awareness and take action against racism as it manifests in the experiences and outcomes of patients of color, the health education curriculum and the continued under-representation of people of color in schools, hospitals, and health system.
3. To develop and sustain anti-racist leadership intentionally and systematically within the health institutions we work in. We call upon the NYC public health community to:
1. Politically expose, not merely describe, the social roots of suffering and disease.
2. Develop and sustain anti-racist leadership intentionally and systematically within the health institutions we work in.
3. Reshape gatekeeping so that we operate with anti-racist values and maintain accountable relationships with the communities we work in and serve.
4. Name racist practices within our institutions and communities, including segregated care and discriminatory policies, that result in adverse outcomes for people of color.
5. Collectively demand that research methodology is examined and improved, so that racial categories are not misused to generate and perpetuate stereotypes and harmful clinical practices.
6. Name and combat intersecting nodes of oppression including but not limited to racism and sexism, racism and classism, racism and homophobia.
7. Raise awareness of violence targeting people and communities of color, and acknowledge gun violence as a public health issue.
