Management Sciences for Health Stands with the Black Community and Commits to Addressing Injustice and Racism

June 9, 2020—At Management Sciences for Health (MSH), we focus our attention and our work on improving the health of the most vulnerable people outside of the United States. But the painful events that we are watching unfold within the US demonstrate overwhelmingly that there is also hard work that urgently needs to be done here at home.

The callous killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black men and women across our country are horrifying. Our thoughts are with the families and communities of those most directly affected by their deaths. These excruciating tragedies are all too common and are just the latest in a long history of Black people being brutalized, marginalized, and de-legitimized in the United States.

The global pandemic both reveals and compounds the problem. COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting Black Americans and other minorities, with deaths and case rates many times higher than among White Americans. These health disparities are the result of centuries of oppression, injustice, and inequality and reflect a structural bias in the US health system.

This moment must be a turning point. We at MSH are taking steps as individuals and as an organization to make sure that we are participants in the change we need. We know that our organization can do more to reflect and serve the communities in which we live and work.

We have begun by listening. Listening to our staff’s experiences; sharing resources so we learn; and learning how we can take clear, meaningful action. As we educate ourselves, we will examine our recruiting practices, our internal policies, and our staff training and provide staff the opportunity to volunteer for vital causes. We have also initiated a review of our work, focused on how we work and what we work on to ensure that we maximize our ability to remove health disparities without introducing new sources of bias. We look forward to sharing what we have learned, the actions we take, and how they impact our work.

As we prepare to take action, I am reminded that MSH’s mission involves closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health. We cannot do that without also closing the gap between knowledge and action wherever systemic discrimination and racial injustice occurs.

In solidarity,

Marian W. Wentworth
President and CEO, Management Sciences for Health