2025 Annual Report
A Message For You
Dear community,
2025 was a year defined by resilience, adaptation, and collective imagination. Across all corners of our global community—from Haiti to Uganda, from the Twin Cities to Western Sahara—we navigated a world increasingly shaped by insecurity, digital and political threats, and intensified authoritarian restrictions.
Yet within these challenges, we also witnessed extraordinary examples of courage, creativity, and solidarity.
EqualHealth’s work this year has centered on fortifying the spaces where people gather to understand the world differently: classrooms, online forums, mutual aid networks, community trainings, and transnational conversations. Whether through Social Medicine courses, Campaign Against Racism meetings, or Mutual Aid partnerships, we have strengthened our commitment from local-to-global solidarity and protected the processes that make collective learning possible.
This has been a year of weathering the storm, but also of building new shelters—new relationships, new pedagogies, new infrastructures for safety, and new ways of remembering and resisting. Our global network continues to integrate social medicine education, lived experience, and organizing in ways that inspire hope during an increasingly polarized time. We were honored this year to be supported by critical partners, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Lancet Commission, the Deb and Max Stone Foundation, and the Abundance Foundation, who further strengthened the reach and impact of our work.
As we mark EqualHealth’s 15th anniversary, we celebrate not only longevity, but also the vibrant movement that has carried us this far. Our alumni, partners, donors, and friends have sustained us through transitions and transformations. Together, we are building the conditions necessary for health justice—rooted in history, accountable to community, and grounded in collective liberation.
With gratitude and conviction,
The EqualHealth Leadership Team
Our Global Community
Our Campaign Against Racism (CAR) has 17 chapters across the world committed to local actions in building global solidarity, while our Social Medicine Course (SocMed) offers transnational graduate-level health education to professional students in Uganda, Haiti, and the United States.
Guiding Frameworks
Social Medicine
Social medicine is an approach to health that recognizes the centrality of the social and structural determination of health, integrates social theory to understand social forces that marginalize and harm communities, and builds collective power to challenge oppression and support the struggle for social justice.
Health Equity
Health equity is the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. Achieving this requires ongoing societal efforts to address historical and contemporary injustices; overcome economic, social, and other obstacles to health and health care; and eliminate preventable health disparities.
Social Justice
Among its many definitions, social justice promotes a just society by challenging injustice and valuing diversity. It exists when all people share a common humanity and therefore have a right to equitable treatment, support for their human rights, and a fair allocation of resources.
Language Justice
Language justice describes the human right to communicate in the language one feels most comfortable in, without fear of discrimination or exclusion. The language justice framework protects and honors communicative autonomy, individual autonomy, and human dignity by working against discrimination and audism.
Healing ARC
Healing ARC (Acknowledgment, Redress, and Closure) is a pragmatic model for addressing documented institutional racial inequities in health care delivery and treatment of patients. Under this framework, Healing ARC applications counter the notion that race-blind solutions alone can effectively fix systems and structures broken by racism in the healthcare systems in communities across the country. Patient-centered and people-centered healthcare requires addressing the institutional racism that prevents some, particularly those in communities of color, from receiving equal care.
Our Global Impact
⭐ Celebrating 15 Years ⭐
EqualHealth proudly marked its 15th anniversary this year—a milestone that honors all who have contributed to our growth as a transnational community of educators, organizers, and movement partners.
Strengthening Learning, Global Engagement, and Adaptability in Uncertainty
EqualHealth leadership and alumni were invited to share insights at the Black Studies Conference, Harvard media training sessions, and dialogues with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
We fostered new and renewed partnerships across the world through our Campaign Against Racism chapters and working groups, enabling us to expand our organizing reach.
Our team continued providing contributions to the Lancet Commission, a longtime partner, on structural drivers of health inequity.
We strengthened our internal infrastructure with ongoing investments in digital and personal security to protect our team and communities.
Social Medicine Course (SocMed)
Expanded Reach & Record Enrollment
The 15th edition of the Social Medicine Course Program celebrated unprecedented growth:
68 learners enrolled across Haiti, Uganda, and Minnesota, our highest enrollment since adopting the transnational model.
Selected from 300+ applicants, reflecting the rising global demand for social medicine training.
Strengthening Transnational Collaboration
Continued integration of language justice, enhancing collaboration and removing linguistic barriers.
Curriculum updates to reflect a more polarized global context, preparing learners to analyze and respond to emergent threats to marginalized communities.
Fostering Leadership in Haiti
The Haiti Social Medicine Seminar, led entirely by SocMed Alumni, convened 15 participants from across the country.
Expanded local impact through seven new partnerships, including three hospitals, strengthening Haiti’s capacity for community-based and social medicine–informed health leadership.
Campaign Against Racism (CAR)
Creative Expression & Political Education
Co-creation of the new CAR logo, guided by Afrofuturism and decolonizing design principles through a collaborative session with artist Marco.
Hosted dynamic spaces for critical reflection, including a presentation on Afrofuturism in movement organizing.
Digital Security & Safety Infrastructure
A 90-minute Digital Security Training with 18 Million Rising supported members in developing secure communication practices amid increasing digital threats.
Global Political Education & Organizing
Hosted the webinar “White Flight Is Not Exile,” reframing global displacement through African feminist and anti-imperialist lenses.
Prepared for the Black Studies Conference 2025, highlighting CAR’s transnational analysis of anti-Black racism, migration, and health inequity.
Led an organizers’ trip to Porto Alegre, Brazil, to learn from the CAR Brazil chapter’s powerful, community-led work advancing racial and health justice.
Solidarity with Haiti
Co-created Haiti Letters for Mirebalais, a project reflecting grief, solidarity, and hope during ongoing violence and displacement.
Immigrant Rights & Health Justice
Partnered with the Health and Law Immigration Solidarity Network to deliver Know Your Patients’ Rights, a training on keeping healthcare safe and accessible for immigrant communities.
Narrative Power & Resistance to Extremism
Two major gatherings with the HOPE-PV Initiative built skills in countering far-right extremism and developing emancipatory narratives.
Global Debt Justice & Policy Advocacy
Participants from the Cancel the Debt working group joined a University of Washington course on Global Health Advocacy, strengthening their ability to analyze global financial structures and produce narrative-driven policy content.
Movement Infrastructure & Global Organizing
Regular multilingual All-Chapter Calls with participants from roughly 10 regions.
Deepened political education across working groups: Far-Right Extremism, Cancel the Debt, Health Policy, Land & Health, Haiti WG, Ubuntu dialogues.
Expanded language justice coordination across all events.
Supported multiple rounds of activity grants for chapters in Uganda, India, Western Sahara, Haiti, the Twin Cities, Brazil, and others.
Continued visibility work: newsletter development, website updates, social media, and secure communication channels.
Ongoing planning for future retreats and convenings.
Strengthened emergency preparedness, including digital security and crisis response strategies.
Mutual Aid
2025 was marked by escalating violence and displacement across Haiti. EqualHealth’s Mutual Aid program responded by standing in steadfast solidarity with colleagues, partners, and friends facing:
Forced displacement due to armed groups
Criminalization in the diaspora
Closure of Haiti’s largest remaining hospital
Intensified deportations from the U.S.
In connection with the Love Letters to Mirebalais campaign, EqualHealth launched a mutual aid initiative to support partners working directly with affected communities.
Mutual Aid Funds Raised & Distributed
We raised $12,155 in mutual aid funds, $8,930 of which were distributed directly to three Haitian partner organizations:
Rasanbleman Fanm Vanyan Limonad (RAFAVAL)
Aksyon pou Byen Èt Timoun yo (ABET)
Association haïtienne des citoyens pour le développement (AHCD)
The remaining funds were used to build mental health infrastructure for Haitian healthcare providers who face significant barriers to providing care.
These funds provided immediate relief and reinforced long-term community capacity. The partnerships formed in this process will continue strengthening Haitian community health and self-determination.
Partners We Collaborated With
Highlander Research and Education Center
University of Minnesota
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Deb and Max Stone Foundation
South Feminist Futures
SocMed Alumni Haiti (SMAH)
SocMed Global Uganda
Abundance Foundation
Rasanbleman Fanm Vanyan Limonad (RAFAVAL)
Aksyon pou Byen Èt Timoun yo (ABET)
Association haïtienne des citoyens pour le développement (AHCD)
Learn More & Support Us
We are committed to continuing to raise the voices of impacted communities. We cannot continue to do this important work without your help.
This year, our community has faced numerous emerging crises that have affected us internally and globally and reminded us how important our efforts are to drive collective action and social justice.
With this in mind, know that any amount you contribute to our work, or any effort you take to help us spread the word about our work, would be greatly appreciated and will make a significant difference in our ability to drive our programs forward.
Thank you for your consideration and support!
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