Special Invitation to join Public Health Liberation
We are writing to invite you, faculty, and graduate students at your institution, as well as community partners, to join Public Health Liberation. We recently launched with our national webinar and conversation. We had more than 700 registrants who represented over 570 organizations including the CDC, NIH, Joint Commission, dozens of academic institutions, state health departments, and community organizations. During our webinar, we defined Public Health Liberation principles and the integral role of systems thinking to address health inequity and the social determinants of health. We believe that through a liberation framework and cross-training, public health can be an engine of social and health reform. The premise of our endeavor is that breakthroughs in health equity require public health to integrate knowledge and skills across diverse fields of study ("transdisciplinary") and to leverage every tool at our disposal. For example, applied public health liberation involves legal writing and research. We are building a coalition of specialists across diverse fields. Experts in public health, housing policy, urban studies, clinical medicine, tobacco cessation, law, and other fields have already joined.

We are recruiting members for our National PHL Committee that will work to fully develop our principles and will author a white paper on best practices and recommendations. The committee is expected to publish in summer 2022. If you know a faculty member, a PhD student, or community members who are interested in addressing the social determinants through a radical approach of assessing and affecting "systems" whether public health, political, social, economic, policy, or research, we would greatly appreciate it if you would forward this opportunity. To cover initial start-up costs as a non-profit, we have membership fees. However, we can work with individuals for a partial or full discount. We hope to significantly reduce or completely eliminate membership registration fees once we have established ourselves as a non-profit.

Apply to be a part of a Public Health Liberation work group.

Here are attributes that we are looking for in work group and Board members. All work group members must be 18 years of age or older.

1. Ideally from one of these communities. All interested individuals are welcome to apply even if your community is not listed. No public health background is required. Community health equity champions, as well as clinicians/academicians, are encouraged to apply.

  • American Indian

  • Appalachia

  • African American/Black (esp. descendants of enslaved people)

  • Children's advocacy

  • Community within declining regional economy

  • Coastal or other communities vulnerable to climate change

  • Exploited labor or trafficking, including advocates

  • Families/communities in generational poverty and cycles of disease burden

  • Health equity research

  • Hispanic/Latinx

  • Interdisciplinary research

  • Lack of access to college or technical education

  • LGBTQ+

  • Marginalized or stigmatized due to social norms or subject to violence or discrimination

  • Mental health needs or advocates

  • People with disabilities or their caretakers

  • Rural areas in US

  • Seniors

  • Women (All intersectionalities)

2. Actively participate in a work group at least monthly and make a meaningful contribution, including accepting and completing assignments outside of meetings.

3. Be willing to listen to other perspectives different from your own and be willing to help support the inclusiveness and principles of the Public Health Liberation Movement.

4. Be willing and able to learn new approaches, theories, practices, and skills for applied liberation from outside of your field of study or training.

We're very excited about the potential of this new movement. Thank you for taking the time to read this and hope that you consider joining or forwarding it to those whom you think may be interested. Please feel free to contact us at info@publichealthliberation.com. We will finalize our work groups and Board soon, so apply now to be a founding member!

Sincerely,
Christopher Williams
Founder, Public Health Liberation

Public health must be at every table to address the social determinants of health. It requires that we are fearless and unrelenting in our insistence on change at all levels of accountability while bringing content knowledge and wide-ranging skills. We seek a renewed social contract.

Our humanity compels us.