From the Director…
We are approaching the close of an extraordinary and challenging year. Are you still standing?
Some of you have lost loved ones. I extend my warmest condolences. Others have suffered emotionally, financially or in other ways. May you find the comfort and support we all deserve.
Grief, sorrow, loss, fear, anger, and despair continue to surround us. But so, too, do little blessings if we open ourselves to them.
For more than a year, we at the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health have been putting in grueling hours all day nearly everyday focused on illuminating, studying and fighting links between COVID, racism and other social injustices.
We have been carving our way along a difficult path for years now. I am so fortunate to share the journey with awesome, dedicated partners in the struggle. To you all—and you know who you all are—I say this. Although it is difficult to fight racism in society while challenging the field of public health from within, you all make the journey memorable and, at times, even fun. What a privilege to work so closely with Bita Amani of our COVID Task Force on Racism & Equity, the student leaders and volunteers who have remained steadfast Center champions throughout this period, Associate Directors Kia Skrine Jeffers and Terence Keel, and many others who have been contributing to the work of the center.
I also feel thankful to everyone who has shared a financial or other gift with the Center. What a privilege. You should know that we strive to be good stewards of all resources shared with us. This year, donations supported the purchase of books for the anticolonialism collective (ACC) book club, which was launched in the spring and remains open to anyone wishing to read together with others. They also sponsored center affiliates to learn transcendental meditation (TM), which is helping some center affiliates find healthier ways to cope while engaging in anti-racism work during the pandemic.
Research institutes often focus solely on faculty and students, but I am incredibly grateful for staff who assist the Center in so many ways, often voluntarily. I am deeply grateful for the generosity, time, expertise and encouragement that staff in the Department of Community Health Sciences as well as some in the Fielding School of Public Health more broadly share with us. Within the Center, I thank all who have served as staff and extend particular debts of gratitude to Minelle David and Consuela Abotsi-Kowu. As you both know, it is a joy to work with each of you.
The movement for health equity continues to expand rapidly and we invite you all to join us in the new year. Check out our calendar for upcoming events. Look out for our projects; some of them may be coming to a community near you. We are particularly excited about Project REFOCUS, a collaboration with Howard University, which will begin reaching out to communities in coming months. Finally, we are delighted to announce the publication of an open access series called the Rapid Assessment of COVID Evidence (R.A.C.E.) Series in the journal Ethnicity & Disease from January 2022 through January 2023. The R.A.C.E. series will present recent findings from the Center’s ongoing research “hot off the press”. Our goal is to share the findings with community as rapidly as possible while ensuring that any findings shared with community have been subjected to the peer-review process.
In closing, I hope we choose to learn the lessons that 2021 tried to teach us. May we leave behind the negative it shared with us, and embrace the promise of the new year.
In struggle for equity,
Chandra
Chandra L. Ford, PhD, MPH, MLIS
Professor and Founding Director
Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health
Department of Community Health Sciences
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
