PIPER Commits to Promoting Racial Equity

Dear Colleagues,

We are moved by the recent protests to denounce police brutality and the recent killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.  We share a strong focus on social justice and wholeheartedly support efforts to promote racial justice and an agenda of anti-racism.  We want to publicly emphasize our belief that Black lives matter.

As an organization, we are reflecting on our activities and structure and the ways in which we can correct systemic bias and structural racism through our work in the academy, and in our efforts to promote safety through teaching, research, and practice. Some of the changes we can make are small and immediate, while others will take longer.

Preventing injuries and violence is at the core of our mission, and we know that Black communities bear an outsized burden due to systematic inequities. Building a more equitable future is an urgent matter of human rights and justice.

We publicly commit ourselves to these changes. With each, we also commit to encouraging our colleagues to follow similar actions:

• Seek opportunities to engage with varied communities, listening carefully to more fully understand the issues of racism and how we can make improvements through our research, teaching and practice efforts as individuals and as an organization;
• Engage in trainings to further our understanding of implicit bias and how we can take action to address our own biases and address needs for larger scale social change;
• Seek to increase engagement of scholars from underrepresented backgrounds and those who bring an equity lens to research in our sponsored seminars, webinars, or other events;
• Host special events to highlight disparities in injury and violence, with an emphasis on finding solutions;
• Provide scholarships for projects for students from underrepresented backgrounds and those seeking to study disparities in injury and violence;
• Identify new efforts to partner with community organizations that focus on racial equity in advancing injury and violence prevention;
• Ensure that our program’s leadership benefits from the voices from diverse perspectives.

We welcome your input and partnership in advancing these efforts and as our program works to advance racial equity.

Sincerely,

Ashley Brooks-Russell, ColoradoSPH

Emmy Betz, CU School of Medicine

Carol Runyan, ColoradoSPH

Lucia Terpak, ColoradoSPH

Sara Brandspigel, ColoradoSPH