Democratizing health
decisions, dollars, and dialogue
to enable true healing.
What if we defined health?
Healthcare in the United States is not designed to address the root causes of health inequities: structural racism, economic extraction, political exclusion — and their byproducts, like food insecurity and homelessness. By contrast, communities across the country — particularly BIPOC and low-income ones — have organized to address these issues for decades.
They have also built liberatory visions and models for healing informed by and accountable to their people, from healers collectives to immigrant health organizing to multi-layered land and food sovereignty initiatives. We — not a small set of decision-makers — possess the power to build a system that recognizes health as a fundamental right.
How can our resources heal?
Healthcare is 20% of our country’s GDP. Spurred by payment reform and social justice reckonings, healthcare actors are starting to shift (a small but impactful sliver) of that capital into social determinants like food and housing — or even, in rare cases, community power-building. Exceedingly few of those funds, however, are directly in the hands of community experts with lived experience of health inequities.
Communities deciding where health funding should go is not only possible, it’s logical: much of healthcare funding flows from us, the public. From accountability campaigns for hospital community benefits to community-led wellness funds, to cooperatively owned health clinics, we can reclaim the capital of the healthcare industry in order to seed healing.
Where are the health narratives that center us?
Mainstream national dialogue around healthcare is exhausting: divisive, incremental changes and plenty of jargon. But the desire to thrive is at once universal and personal, ancient and urgent. Starting with those core dreams, fears, values, and histories is crucial to building together.
Healing Capital is a space for all those who have a story to tell — about the harms of existing systems, the forces that shaped your own concepts of health, or your community’s imagining of the old and new. Collectively, we can craft narratives that reshape the boundaries of what is possible.