Healthy Alaskans: Our Commitment to Racial Equity

Alaska’s Statewide Health Improvement Plan, Healthy Alaskans 2030, is a statewide effort providing a roadmap and goals for promoting and improving health. It is focused on improving health outcomes through prevention and risk reduction with a particular interest in promoting and ensuring health equity for all Alaskans.

The annual Healthy Alaskans scorecards show that not all Alaskans have the same opportunities for health, wellness and safety. As we move toward our health goals, we must acknowledge the historical and contemporary ways that race (and other social markers that intersect with race) shapes and affects the health of Alaskans, and the communities and institutions of our state.

The long history of oppression against certain populations in America and within Alaska makes clear that racism must be addressed as a human rights issue and as a public health issue. The American Public Health Association is calling for immediate attention to racism as a public health crisis, and a growing list of states, cities and counties are now naming racism as a determinant of health.  The Healthy Alaskans effort and plan, co-led by the State of Alaska DHSS and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, addresses health equity in the following ways:

• Maintains the foundational guiding principle of health equity;
• Ensures workgroups are composed of active members representing an array of organizations, communities and entities working to improve the health of all Alaskans;
• Ensures data collection used to develop the state health improvement plan includes input from rural Alaskans by holding community listening sessions, tabling at conferences that rural residents attend, and publishing surveys and public comment opportunities in ways that reach rural residents; and by partnering with service providers to collect data from varied racial and ethnic communities within Alaska;
• Publishes two annual scorecards; one for all Alaskans and one for Alaska Native people. This shows progress toward established targets and highlights the differences between the two populations so that action may be taken to reduce the disparities ;
• Includes actions within the Healthy Alaskans work plan that move our state closer to reducing health inequities.

We acknowledge this work as a good start but we recognize that we can do more. We can use this important moment in history to reflect on how we can deepen our commitment to addressing racism as an ongoing public health crisis.

As we work together across personal and institutional differences to plan for and track the health initiatives of Alaska, we understand that addressing racism at the interpersonal, community, institutional, and structural levels is key to assuring the health of all Alaskans. We look forward to continuing these conversations and invite you, to hold us accountable in this important work.

We are always available at healthyalaskans@alaska.gov to discuss this and any other topic further; please reach out to us.