The core goal of individuals working in the population health enterprise should be to improve health for all. There are many formulations of this fundamental aspiration,1 but it is unlikely that there is much disagreement about this general notion among researchers and practitioners in medicine or in public health. Over the past few decades there has been a growing awareness of the health gaps between groups, often characterized as health disparities or health inequities across the axes of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex among others.
Black US residents live shorter lives than their White counterparts, and they are sicker throughout life. The richest quintile of US residents can expect to live 1 decade or more longer than the poorest quintile.2 Despite improvements in health over the past several decades for the richest 20%, many measures of health have worsened for the poorest 80%.3 The focus on health inequities has grown and sharpened during the past year as issues of racial justice more broadly have risen in the public consciousness, triggered by the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent civil protests that followed—the largest such protests in US history.
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