Racial Justice Program

About the Program

The FXB Center aims to create an actionable field of scholarship examining the impact of structural racism on health and builds ties with our neighbors – community organizations, decision-makers, media, and government partners – to ensure this research appears not only in academic journals but is also communicated in ways that help guide change.

The FXB Center’s Structural Racism Initiative for Diversity with Equity (STRIDE) uses practice-oriented research to deepen the knowledge base and to fill gaps in content and methodology. Its activities have included support for post-doctoral research on how racism harms health, student internships with community organizations, and a project focused on the potential public health impact of monetary reparations for African enslavement.

Research brings together scholars and practitioners to investigate several mutually reinforcing areas through which racial health inequities are perpetuated. Topics include:

1. Addressing the adverse perinatal impacts for Black-birthing people residing in resource-deprived neighborhoods over their life course
2. Impact of parental incarceration on children
3. Racial bias training in medical education and clinical practice, race-based medicine, algorithmic bias, and health policy.
4 .Housing discrimination and neighborhood segregation
5. Environmental practices and climate justice
6. Novel ways of monitoring health outcomes on the neighborhood level using wastewater sampling

Beyond the moral imperative of achieving equity, what public health can add to the call to end structural racism is data that will inform life-saving actions and decisions at the structural level. The FXB Center believes research on structural racism can help quantify the cost of inaction and provide the needed evidence to reform existing structures and practices.

Meet the Fellows, Research Associates, and Research Scientists

Meet the Research Advisors

Meet the Principal Investigator

Mary Bassett, MD, MPH
Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH

Community-based Internship Placements

Community-based internship placements are a component of the FXB Center’s STRIDE Program designed to build, strengthen, and sustain our relationships with communities working to address structural racism in health. Through these internships, we place doctoral students in community-driven projects focused on combating the various ways structural racism impacts health.

We prioritize partnerships with grassroots community-based organizations and community-based groups in the Greater Boston area, while also collaborating with a diverse range of organizations, including national advocacy groups and local public health departments. This internship opportunity provides students with hands-on experience in community-engaged practice while contributing to meaningful, community-led efforts toward racial and social justice.

​Since 2019, the FXB Center has helped place and support PhD students in organizations that work to serve children’s needs such as:   

  • ​Friends of the Children-Boston: The internship was created to serve Friends of the Children by developing a mental health needs assessment and program design for children to address the need for psychosocial and academic support during the pandemic.    
  • ​Neighborhood Birth Center (NBC): The Neighborhood Birth Center (NBC) in Boston is working to develop a sustainable nonprofit community birth center model given that birth centers currently face a wide array of policy barriers and thus often rely on personal financing from midwives to operate.    
  • ​Somali Parents Advocacy Center for Education (SPACE): The project involved conducting research to understand how well Somali families in the Greater Boston area comprehend their child’s abilities in the context of the new Individualized Education Program (IEP) forms.    
  • ​Citizens for Juvenile Justice: This research project aimed to document and support the delivery of high-quality, age, gender and culturally appropriate healthcare for children in criminal justice detention globally.   
  • ​New England Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU): The mission of this non-profit is to address the community’s needs through providing medical services, advice, and educating the community on environmental conditions that influence reproductive and children’s health. The project helped build capacity and spur efforts related to community collaboration, education, outreach, and advocacy through the lens of environmental justice (e.g. youth programming, mobile medical services).  
  • ​Resilient Sisterhood Project:  The project involved a literature review focused on the structural drivers of early puberty which disproportionately impact Black girls. This research will support future programming focused on education and resources surrounding this inequity.
  • Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC): Projects included a five-session Farm to Early Care and Education (Farm to ECE) Learning Collaborative for early childcare educators to promote young children’s healthy eating and access to fresh local produce through an interactive educator training.   

Further Racial Justice Work


Recent Publications & Press

Receipt of Federal Income Support by Eligible Low-Birth-Weight Infants, JAMA Pediatrics, February 17, Ichiro Kawachi (Co-Author)

Threats to Democracy and the Right to Health, American Journal of Public Health, February 12, Mary T. Bassett (Author)

Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Due to Homicide, Suicide, and Drug Overdose, JAMA Network Open, February 11, Jaquelyn L. Jahn (Co-Author)

How political decisions affect public health (Nancy Krieger quoted, Harvard Public Health, February 7, 2025)

Visualizing Neighborhood COVID-19 Levels, Trends, and Inequities in Wastewater: An Equity-Centered Approach and Comparison to CDC Methods, Journal of Public Health Management & Practice, March/April 2025, Tori L. Cowger, Ruchita Balasubramanian, Soroush Moallef, Nancy Krieger, Mary T. Bassett (Co-Authors)

CDC webpages go dark as Trump targets public health information (Nancy Krieger quoted, The Guardian, February 4, 2025)

Reproductive rights at the U.S. state level and medication access for pregnant women with opioid use, Social Science & Medicine, February 2025, Ichiro Kawachi (Co-Author)

Finding Hope on the Path to Health Equity (Mary T. Bassett quoted, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Blog, January 16, 2025)

Prevalence of and Inequities in Poor Mental Health Across 3 US Surveys, 2011 to 2022, JAMA Network Open, January 15, David R. Williams (Co-Author)

Examining changes in fatal violence against women after bail reform in New Jersey, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, January 13, Jaquelyn L. Jahn (Co-Author)

How reparations could affect Black mortality (Jourdyn A. Lawrence quoted, Harvard Public Health, January 7, 2025)

Aletha Maybank to step down as AMA’s chief health equity officer (Mary T. Bassett quoted, STAT, December 30, 2024)

Dental Clinic Deserts in the US: Spatial Accessibility Analysis, JAMA Network Open, December 23, Ichiro Kawachi (Co-Author)

Culture as a Social Determinant of HealthPsychological Science in the Public Interest, December 19, Ichiro Kawachi (Co-Author)

Politicians, power, and the people’s health: US elections and state health outcomes, 2012–2024, Health Affairs Scholar, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 10, Nancy Krieger, Soroush Moallef, Ruchita Balasubramanian, Tori L. Cowger, Alecia J. McGregor, Mary T. Bassett (Co-Authors)

US health in historical context, The Lancet, December 7
Mary T. Bassett (Author)

Obstetric Care Access at Rural and Urban Hospitals in the United States, JAMA, December 4
Alecia McGregor (Co-Author)

Racial discrimination and cognitive function: An instrumental variable analysis, Social Science & Medicine, December 2024
Jourdyn A. Lawrence, Ichiro Kawachi (Co-Authors)

Reparations for African Enslavement in the U.S. and Black Survival Using the Panel Study of Income DynamicsAmerican Journal of Epidemiology, November 29, Jourdyn A. Lawrence, Jaquelyn L. Jahn, Justin M. Feldman, Natalia Linos, Mary T. Bassett (Co-Authors)

Cannabis Policy Impacts Public Health and Health Equity, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – Committee on the Public Health Consequences of Changes in the Cannabis Policy Landscape, November 14, Mary T. Bassett, Jasmin Graves cited (Uprooting Institutionalized Racism as Public Health Practice)

Fostering resilience in the face of adversity (David WilliamsBrittney Francis quoted, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Featured News Stories 2024, November 14, 2024)

Talking About Incarceration History: Engaging Patients and Healthcare Providers in CommunicationJournal of General Internal Medicine, October 31, Monik C. Botero (Co-Author)

Podcast explores what drives health disparities (Brittney Francis quoted, Tori Cowger mentioned, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health In the News 2024, October 16, 2024)

Dorothy Roberts.” In Jipguep-Akhtar, M.-C., & Khan, N.M. (Eds.)., Fifty Key Scholars in Black Social Thought (1st ed.). Routledge. Fifty Key Scholars in Black Social Thought. Routledge, October 14, 2024, Marie V. Plaisime (Chapter Author)

Addressing the Health Impacts of Racism on Children and Youth: Equity Until EqualityAcademic Pediatrics, September-October 2024, Marie V. Plaisime (Co-Author)