Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts

Understanding How We Got Here

January 23, 2025
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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!"

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