Featured Panel: Reimagining Health Justice and Dismantling Structural Inequities

As public administration scholars, policy practitioners, and community advocates, we frequently confront a stark reality: marginal reforms are entirely insufficient when addressing systemic harm. To truly advance community health, we must shift from crisis management and performative equity commitments toward structural transformation.

A recent virtual convening hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s initiative, The Intersection, perfectly encapsulates this critical dialogue. Titled "A New Vision For Care: Building Anti-Racist Health Systems," this panel brings together prominent leaders at the nexus of policy, healthcare, and community organizing to dissect the deep-seated hierarchies within our public health infrastructure and map out an actionable framework for institutional change.

You can watch the full 58-minute panel discussion below:

Watch the Discussion on YouTube

(Convened on Tuesday, May 19, 2026)

The Panelists & Leadership

• Moderator: Anton Gunn (REACH Beyond Solutions)

• Opening Remarks: June Glover, MSW (Senior Program Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

• Dr. Jamila Michener (Associate Professor & Director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures, Cornell University)

• Jennifer Wells, MSW (Director of Economic Justice, Community Change)

• Robin Wright-Pierce, MPA (Founder & CEO, Transforming Change)

The dialogue centers around a core tenet of critical policy analysis: policy is downstream from power. For health equity to be sustainable and legally durable, public administrators and community stakeholders must fundamentally restructure how power, financing, and accountability are distributed.

June Glover opens the session by addressing how public systems historically shift blame onto marginalized populations rather than holding the flawed, bureaucratic systems that constrain individual choices accountable. True transformation requires moving past incremental tweaks on the margin and embedding accountability mechanisms directly into the core administrative structures to prevent future policy reversals.

Dr. Jamila Michener expands on the U.S. health system's structural architecture, emphasizing that disparities are not accidental. They are the direct result of historical design and multi-level policy choices that concentrate power among corporate entities and elites while depriving vulnerable populations of a political voice. Because these inequities have permeating roots dating back to the foundation of our public institutions, fixing them demands an overhaul of decision-making bodies.

Jennifer Wells shares powerful insights from grassroots listening sessions in the American South. She highlights the heavy burdens of medical debt and geographic isolation in rural areas, where hospital closures leave communities with severely restricted access to care. Her findings underscore that communities hold the answers; the path forward involves shifting power back to the grassroots level, expanding diverse practitioner bases (such as midwifery and doula networks), and ensuring that public systems serve people over profit.

Robin Wright-Pierce addresses the courage required to navigate institutional pushback, retaliation, and administrative roadblocks in difficult political climates. Utilizing the Wise Warrior leadership framework, she details the necessity of grounding policy advocacy in a historical context, engaging the lived expertise of community elders, and building robust, collaborative networks across different sectors of the movement ecosystem to translate ideas into direct political action.

If we are to build public systems that genuinely protect underserved communities, we must design explicit, non-tokenistic pathways for feedback and co-production. When the populations most impacted by a policy have direct, structural influence over budgets, administrative timelines, and organizational governance, we move closer to a society where health is treated as a fundamental right rather than a structural privilege.

Join the Conversation

How can public administrators better integrate grassroots feedback loops to challenge traditional top-down decision-making? Leave your thoughts and analytical insights in the comments section below.