In 2020, we communicated to you our strong commitment to anti-racism work – a critically important and continuous aspect of our public health access work. This commitment outlined specific areas and actions that we were taking. When we launched our public statement outlining our ongoing commitment to anti-racism work and began reporting out on our efforts, we were focused on white leadership’s responsibility to bear the laboring oar in any reporting efforts and we pledged to report out to you annually on our progress and actions in service to our commitment. With guidance and generous feedback from some of AccessMatters’ Black staff, we have committed to evolve that model to be more participatory, particularly in assessing the impact of our anti-racism efforts on our BIPOC staff and constituents, as well as in the development of goals for the coming year. We aim to ensure that the revised process centers the voices and direction of staff of color, and particularly Black staff.
As we step back and reset our approach, we are committed to ensuring our new approach honors peoples’ desires regarding their varying levels of involvement, and does not add burden. In keeping to our commitment for accountability and reporting, we do have updates available here focused only on the policy, programmatic, and board governance work we have advanced. We look forward to reporting back on our important internal work next year.
We appreciate the upcoming opportunity to rethink our goal setting and evaluation to better identify and more meaningfully address issues and policies that impact our BIPOC staff, clients, partners, and community members. In the meantime, if you have questions, suggestions, or recommendations for this work, please email info@accessmatters.org.