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- 7 - accessHealthNews.net Special Issue 2025 Volume 12 | Issue No. 101 In Kansas and Missouri, there is a growing movement that imagines a society without racism, and we see that racism harms everyone. We have the ingenuity to solve deeply entrenched health issues that have plagued our counties and communities for decades. We have the power to shape our reality and mold a future where people of color are free from structural racism because we know that racism, not race, drives the health inequities we see between Black and white Kansans and Missourians. That's why it's often said that when it comes to health care, you can't have quality without equity – and you can't have equity without quality. For people of color, the COVID-19 pandemic elucidated the chasm between quality and equity. Nancy Krieger, professor of social epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, likened the virus to pulling a thread that showed "the very different conditions in which we live because of social structures that are inequitable …By pulling the thread, it is revealing patterns that have been [long known] in public health." As COVID devastated the nation, moves were being made to address anti-Black racism in Missouri and Kansas health systems that have sustained these long- known inequities. The Kansas City Health Equity Learning and Action Network (the LAN) was formed under the leadership of the Health Forward Foundation. Its CEO, Qiana Thomason, said philanthropy is often best situated to tackle root-cause ills. "The Foundation, with its bevy of resources, had a duty to make health equity a critical part of its purpose and mission – and instigate the necessity of change in Kansas City," she said. The LAN aligns with Health Forward's purpose to support and build inclusive, powerful, and healthy communities characterized by racial equity and economically just systems. LAN partners include the KC Health Collaborative (KCHC), which brings together health care stakeholders to improve population health and health equity in the Kansas City region and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which spent more than two decades leveraging improvement science to advance and sustain health outcomes in health and health care globally. Read more