Action Plan 9: Position the AAMC as a National Leader in Health Equity and Health Justice

Despite decades of effort by various sectors — including public health and medicine — health inequities and injustices persist in our nation.

This action plan created the AAMC Center for Health Justice in September 2021 to contribute to the solutions to health inequities by innovating, collaborating, and digging deeper to ensure that systems and structures shift toward justice. The center will spark community collaborations with diverse sectors and individuals contributing their unique resources in service of the common cause of health justice.

The center convenes two groups of health justice champions and collaborators who lend their voices to key efforts, including the Multisector Partner Group – comprised of individuals from sectors representing the diverse social and political determinants of health at the national and local levels – and AAMC CHARGE (Collaborative for Health Equity: Act, Research, Generate Evidence).

• As part of its ongoing efforts to regularly poll nationally representative samples of adults across the United States to gather public opinions in real-time, the Center has published a series of polling briefs. Two recent briefs focus on public perspectives and perceptions of environmental justice and climate change.
• The Center regularly publishes health justice research briefs to explore the health equity impacts of public policy. As part of its Health Justice Research Agenda, the Center published a brief using polling data to understand the public’s perspective on reparations in America, followed by an interactive discussion based on the findings and how the data impacts the work of health justice. 
• The AAMC and AAMC Center for Health Justice submitted letters to the White House on community engagement, and to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on its strategic plan for sexual and gender minority health research.
• In March 2024, the Center began a year-long project to implement and evaluate the Principles of Trustworthiness Toolkit with four communities and their multisector partners. The cohort will assess changes in collaboration, engagement, and trustworthiness among those that participate. 
• The Center issued a call for storytelling collaborators to seek environmental justice champions to work with the Center and share their successes and challenge narratives that obstruct their local environmental justice work. The stories of five selected teams will be shared throughout late 2024 and 2025 
• The Health Equity Inventory is a coordination tool to help institutions and community organizations communicate about their health equity work and form effective partnerships. The free tool is now available for AAMC member organizations.

The AAMC Center for Health Justice will continue to engage the health equity community across sectors, build evidence and share expertise about policies that ensure every community has the vital conditions for health and wellbeing, and ease the path for other organizations inside and outside of health care working to partner with their communities for health. Through its research, analysis, and collaborations, the Center will continue to create space for multisector efforts to address inequities in its core focus areas of maternal health equity, data for health equity, environmental justice, and trustworthiness.

• Join AAMC CHARGE (Collaborative for Health Equity: Act, Research, Generate Evidence) to connect with a multidisciplinary group of health equity champions and community partners via events, collaborations, and a virtual community.
• Subscribe to the monthly Center for Health Justice newsletter.
• Follow the Center for Health Justice on X and LinkedIn.
• Visit the Center for Health Justice website to learn more about our work and how you or your organization can get involved.
• Contact the Center for Health Justice.