Our vision is for all people within our region to have access to what they need to lead healthy lives.

Jaymie R. Zapata is a Senior Planner - Public Health with the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. "Though the challenges of achieving racial equity may seem daunting, the past has a lot to teach us about how the systems that define our daily lives came to be. The first step to dismantling systems is to understand them. As a systems-level public health planner, I think it is vital to always be reading and educating myself about the decisions my predecessors made in public health for good or ill, so I can center what is just and challenge what is not. A book that was essential to my understanding of race and Black health in the United States was The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander , without which I do not think I would have been able to understand the continuation of Jim Crow laws into the present day nor their deep impact. At my agency we have established a racial equity reading library in our break room, stocked with many books from the Race and Health Equity Resource Guide . We hope people will take a minute over coffee to unplug, pick up a book, and gain some new insights while they are at it. There’s never a bad moment to learn something new!"

Keleigh Waldner is the Senior Manager of Communications and Research at the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts. She writes, "When someone asks me how to explain structural racism or social determinants of health, I often direct them to Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 'Bridge to Health' model . The bridge metaphor illustrates structural racism in an accessible way. One bridge is built to safely carry people to their destination of good health, while the other is intentionally constructed with barriers. I appreciate this metaphor because it highlights the human role in creating systems and practices that value some lives more than others. This isn’t a natural occurrence; it’s the result of intentional decisions over time. Given the rise in rhetoric suggesting that our genes are responsible for our intelligence or criminality, it feels important to emphasize this point. Inequality isn’t genetic, rather, it is deeply steeped into our policies, systems, and environments. It is easy to become immobilized by injustice. At times it all feels like too much. The 'Bridge to Health' model offers some hope that we have the agency to replace these old bridges with new ones that enable everyone to thrive."