It was an honor to serve as theme issue advisor for the Health Affairs special issue dedicated to racism and health.

This special issue is everything I hoped to read as a young Black scholar in health services research.

Before its publication, as a Black woman in the field of health services research neither my community nor my intellect were reflected back to me. In fact, often the presumptions and lack of consideration for my viewpoint were—if not intentional—institutionally prejudiced.

As a student I found this feeling to be unsettling.

In 2005, I read an article in Health Affairs, titled "Health Disparities By Race And Class: Why Both Matter," by Ichiro Kawachi and colleagues. I had been searching for scholarship that described measurement challenges for health services research.

The authors' discussion of the historical, political, and ideological obstacles that hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health gave me the permission and courage to ask different, more-nuanced critical questions.

As a result, I expected more from our discipline in return.

I still have the now-tattered printout of that paper annotated with thoughts and dreams as a reminder of what I needed from my future. I look at it today both proud of and astonished by how far we’ve come.

I also recall presenting during my doctoral training on the 2005 Health Affairs paper from David Williams and Pamela Braboy Jackson, "Social Sources of Racial Disparities in Health." In it, the authors write that "segregation is a neglected but enduring legacy of racism in the United States."

It was the first time I had seen a scholar use the word racism in a wide-reaching publication in my field of study. These words describing health disparities as embedded in larger historical, geographic, sociocultural, economic, and political contexts, and call for public policies to address health disparities, affirmed my lived experience, my intuition.

It also confirmed for me that my instincts about the path we needed to forge — an antiracist future — were indeed valid and necessary.

We have evolved. We are evolving. But, as my co-authors and I state in "Improving the Measurement of Structural Racism To Achieve Antiracist Health Policy", progress has been slow.

The path forward requires acknowledging and learning from the scholarship of academics who have expertise in addressing the most entrenched barrier to high functioning health care, health equity. This Health Affairs special issue on racism and health is part of this process. The issue is full of papers from scholars across the country leading the charge.

The goal of true antiracist research and policy is to center the voices that are often marginalized and excluded from the vigorous debate that strengthens all scholarship. If we truly believe in the power of ideas to transform policy to better the lives of all our communities that scholarship must embrace a true meritocracy of inclusion.

We stand on the shoulders of giants like Baldwin, DuBois, hooks, Lorde, and Davis and contemporary scholars like David Williams, Chandra Ford, Stephan Thomas, and Camara Phyllis Jones. We must continue to forge a path for emerging scholars.

Scholars like J’Mag Karbeah, whose research at the intersections of racism and health is contributing to policy conversations. Or those like Elle Lett, who coined the phrase "health equity tourism" to teach us about the practice of investigators—without prior experience or commitment to health equity research—parachuting into the field in response to timely and often temporary increases in public interest and resources.

And, Asha Hassan, whose research has led to a national study of the impact on reproductive health of tear gas exposure during Black Lives Matter protests.

Our future is bright, but the light will dim if we do not fully commit to elevating these scholars and many others with brave and bold ideas and unfettered expectations and demands for liberation.

About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.

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