Truth, Racial Healing, and Transforming Systems of Racism.

This article stemmed from an acceptance speech for the Global Alliances' 2022 Presidential Award made by Dr. Gail Christopher and her daughter, Heather McGhee. Heather McGhee is a New York Times best-selling author of the book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. The history, transformative impact, and importance of the truth, racial healing, and transformation movement in exposing and eradicating the fallacy of a hierarchy of human value are outlined. Dr. Christopher shares insights into the past and provides hope for the future through her Rx Racial Healing model for authentic storytelling and changes in perspective. The article also discusses the momentum of public health jurisdictions declaring racism as a public health crisis and presents a resource, Healing Through Policy: Creating Pathways to Racial Justice, that has been developed to assist jurisdictions in related work. Public Policy Relevance Statement: A persistent individual and collective belief in racial hierarchy fuels discrimination and inequities in immigration, criminal justice, legal, and health systems. Systems transformation requires eliminating this core belief while redressing the harms it has caused. Transformation also requires implementing sustainable policies to assure equitable opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]