2AC – FWK

Galea 18 – Sandro Galea, Professor of Public Health at Boston University (Healthier: Fifty thoughts on the foundations of public health, (date is correct), pages 116-7)

How should we in academic public health engage with the issue of racism, at both interpersonal and structural levels? How might we best mitigate its effects? I suggest four possible approaches. First, we must tackle racism at the community level. In this capacity, some of us may choose to express solidarity with affected groups, participating in public shows of support. Such actions ensure that the issue of racism moves to the forefront of the public debate and stays there. Indeed, peaceful public statements of concern about a pressing social issue always have a place in an open society, and our responsibility to make these statements is not in any way inconsistent with our role as members of an academic community. Given that we are members of this community, my second suggestion relates to how our scholarship may pave the way for progress on this issue. The work of knowledge generation can help inform acute social needs, developing constructive strategies to help solve the urgent problems of our time—problems such as racism. This nudges us toward a scholarship of consequence, where we aim to shed light on the root causes of racial divides and the link between racism and the health of the public. To do this, we must prioritize our research questions accordingly. By focusing on what matters most, and orienting our scholarship toward areas of inquiry that tackle the foundational drivers of population health, we stand to make a real difference in creating a fairer, less racially fraught society. Third, we are charged at our various institutions with fostering an education environment that both teaches the foundations of our field and prepares students to engage with evolving issues of contemporary public health importance. That calls for an education that is dynamic and reflexive, but also one that is encouraging and respectful of the sharing of ideas. Such an academic climate does much to advance the goals of engendering mutual understanding and identifying solutions grounded in diversity of experience, opinion, and perspective. It is not enough to merely acknowledge disparities; we need to engage in difficult, sometimes uncomfortable discussions about these issues in order to understand one another and improve the often unacceptable conditions our scholarship makes all too apparent to us. Finally, insofar as public health centers around shaping the conditions that make people health, and insofar as those conditions depend on the introduction of health in all sectors, we need to work toward a health conversation that extends well beyond the walls of academia. This agitates for an engagement with the public conversation around the issue of racism wherever the conversation may arise. Public health’s unique perspective, informed by its scholarship, is well positioned to influence how we understand racism and its consequences for the well-being of populations. By clarifying the links between racism and health by making them unignorable in the public debate, we can then begin to advance solutions. Needless to say, racism and hate of any kind are intolerable, even when we do not take into account their health consequences. But health, as a universal aspiration, can serve as a clarifying lens for action, elevating the importance of creating a society free of racism, where health will no longer be determined by the color of a person’s skin. The actions of a committed, activist public health will go far toward bringing this about.