Truth and Reconciliation: Mayor Martin J. Walsh on Racism as a Public Health Crisis
By Elizabeth Alpert
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On June 24, 2020, the Voices in Leadership discussion between Mayor Marty Walsh and Dr. Michelle Williams spotlighted the role of leadership during a global pandemic and national reckoning with systemic racism. Mayor Walsh, the 54th Mayor of the City of Boston, declared racism to be an emergency and public health crisis in early June. Dr. Williams is Dean of the Faculty and Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and has authored multiple articles on racism as a public health issue. Their conversation explored the impact of data, discrepancies between individual and collective perspectives, power of conversation, transitioning from a moment to a movement, and connection between truth and reconciliation.
The Impact of Data
In the declaration naming racism as an emergency and public health crisis, Mayor Walsh recognized the need for accurate data collection and careful analysis. Dean Williams brought up the importance of using that data to 1) inform specific policy changes and 2) evaluate the impact of those policy changes on the overall goal of dismantling racism. Mayor Walsh provided examples of using such data for forming an equity task force; creating a city-funded housing voucher program; distributing small business equity funds; divesting US$12 million from the City’s police department and redistributing the funds to public health; and funding the Boston Emergency Services Team (B.E.S.T.), a collaboration between police officers and social workers in responding to calls related to crisis evaluation and treatment services.
Data clearly reveal the need for those interventions, yet evaluating their effects on equity and efficacy can be complex. Many factors influence whether a policy has its intended effect(s). Mayor Walsh illustrated this while describing how racism-driven health inequities are inherently tied to the social determinants of health — i.e. the conditions where people live, learn, work, and play. Research on these conditions highlights the stark inequities between people in the United States. For example, Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to experience…
