Our mission is to advance community health, wealth and well-being by dismantling racism, oppression and other systemic drivers of inequity, to create equitable opportunities through learning, service, research and advocacy.

I saw here a real commitment to partner with the local community and a focus on improving health and well-being in collaboration with the community in response to their values and needs.

It is a very different approach from many other centers for health equity where the funding sources usually predefine the research agenda or the focus. Our model allows us to be more responsive to what the community identifies as priorities and uses their strengths to build on.

Whether you're a researcher, a policy advocate, or an educator, you can find alignment with our center’s goals. I want to bring our campus together and leverage our collective resources to create a nationally recognized program of research, education, training and outreach that promotes health equity.

We plan to host a symposium this coming year to showcase the campus’s activities in health equity. From there, we will develop thematic working groups and a seed grant program that would foster interdisciplinary and community collaborations.

Firstly, the center will train students, faculty and research staff on campus, as well as community members, in health equity. We will foster a co-learning environment where the community is learning from us, and we are learning from them about how to achieve our mission. The center always has the community – the people who we want to benefit from the programs or initiatives and research – central in what we do.

The Center for Health Equity is focused on addressing differences in social determinants of health. We go beyond the clinical and into the community, working with community-based organizations, churches, schools, etc., to address non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. If you don't have a healthy community with good schools, livable wages, affordable housing, safe communities and streets, access to healthcare people cannot have healthy lives.

I'm not local, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. There is a major learning curve, but I'm open to new ideas.

One of my major motivators for coming to Colorado is that my family moved here – I want my granddaughters to grow in a thriving community. I want to be sure that we do our best to create an environment where all children can grow healthy and strong and live to their full potential. That's the thing about health equity – we strive to create environments where everyone can attain their highest level of health.