LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
Fall Greetings from Impact100 DC!
For those of you who missed our speaker the other night, Dr. Noel Brathwaite, Director of the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities (MHHD) at the Maryland Department of Health, I encourage you to listen to his remarks linked here and posted to our YouTube Channel and review his presentation.
His 30-minute talk was chock full of data and resources on the wide racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care in our area; on the clear line directly tracing those disparities to the racism embedded in institutions, structures, and policies generations ago; and on the degree to which race and ethnicity remain, after so many generations, reliable predictors of health care. And never have these disparities been so starkly illuminated, thanks to COVID 19.
A profoundly disturbing set of data and resources. But continue on through Dr. Brathwaite’s remarks and you will come to the slides that describe initiatives and projects that MHHD is working on, many in partnership with community nonprofit organizations; slides that refer to the power that can be found in individual responsibility and actions; and slides that discuss what organizations like Impact100 DC can do to contribute most effectively to solutions, to make an appreciable difference. This optimistic assessment of individual and organizational agency felt like a booster shot for many of us on the call.
As the season changes and the days shorten, we need to look for bright lights where we can find them. Thank you, Dr. Brathwaite, for shining a light not only on health care realities in our community but on the power that we have as individuals and organizations to act.
Warmly,
Ann