Transforming Academia for Equity

The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH), and our member Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) accredited schools and programs, are committed to dismantling racism and ending the cultural and structural conditions that enable inequality, hate, colonialism, and the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality. We see academic public health institutions as having a primary role in facilitating this change. ASPPH’s long-standing efforts in this arena are reflected in the 2030 Strategic Plan for the association and in a published report entitled Dismantling Racism and Structural Racism in Academic Public Health: A Framework. The Framework recommendations are intended to serve as a blueprint for academic institutions to achieve inclusive excellence in the domains of teaching, research, and service. These domains are being operationalized via a unique partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), which funded ASPPH and seven academic institutions to create a transformative approach to affect change. These adaptive change strategies provide critical insights into the complexities, nuances, and opportunities for transforming academia for equity, which leads to a competent 21st Century public health workforce.

Public Health has traditionally been a field synonymous with social justice and inclusive excellence. However, historically insurmountable barriers and unique challenges have stifled the progress needed to create academic environments that reflect inclusive excellence and signal meaningful direction toward equity for faculty, staff, students, and the communities served by institutions. The work of seven (7) RWJF institutions, guided by the foundational racial equity documents from ASPPH, has spent the last 18 months utilizing adaptive change strategies to understand the people, processes, resources, and commitment needed to transform academic institutions into equitable spaces. While there are a myriad of published examples documenting strategic plans, goals, and outcomes in diversity, equity, and inclusive excellence, there are no guiding principles or models that detail the processes required to transform academic institutions or the culturally responsive and equitable metrics for evaluation. This Research Topic seeks to highlight the journey, progress, pitfalls, and successes associated with transformative changes in public, private, state, regionally, and globally diverse schools and programs of public health accompanied by contributions that will enhance the readers’ understanding of what it takes to lead, serve, model, and evaluate the academic transformation
process.

Specific areas of interest related to the Research Topic of Transforming Academia for Equity include but are not limited to:

 Adaptive change strategy theory, process, and outcomes, relevant to the assessment of systems, readiness for change, and characteristics of successful change leadership in academic institutions;
 Case examples of successful schools, programs, leaders, and communities that have led transformation initiatives affecting positive outcomes for faculty, students, staff, practice partners, and community members;
 Operationalizing recommendations from the ASPPH Framing the Future 2030
initiative;
 Successful utilization of Culturally Responsive and Racially Equitable Engagement and Evaluation (CRREEE) strategies;
 Empirical studies and tested interventions to examine the role of diversity and
inclusive excellence in culture, environment, climate, and student learning;
 Novel approaches in strategic planning that align with transforming academic
spaces;
 Innovation in promotion and tenure criteria and evaluation of teaching, research, and service that aligns with transformative approaches to dismantling structural racism, enabling inclusive excellence, and provides a framework for faculty recruitment and retention;
 Faculty and/or Student-led initiatives in social justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ parity, anti-hate campaigns, political discourse, civil engagement, community-based participatory research, partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSI’s);
 Innovative curricula that prepare undergraduate and/or graduate students to tackle and dismantle inequities in population health;
 Ethical utilization of artificial intelligence to promote transformative changes in academic institutions, health departments, and community partnerships.

Keywords: academia, education, academic institutions, public health, education equity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.