Moving from checklists to organizational ethos
Sarah McAfee
Director of Communications
Center for Health Progress
Key Takeaways
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DEI is not a checklist to follow; it requires commitment, investment, and willingness to examine and shift the structure of an organization.
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Organizations who are looking to improve their communications in line with DEI values need constant feedback and input from people with diverse identities and lived experiences in order to uncover hidden bias and blind spots.
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Communicators must be thoughtful in publishing data, always including historical and systemic context to explain the “why,” otherwise you risk readers’ implicit biases reinforcing false and harmful narratives.
Overview
“Communications are integral and critical to all DEI efforts,” says Sarah McAfee, Director of Communications for Center for Health Progress. “Every time we have discussions about challenges, communications are usually either the pain points or the solutions.” With a staff of 14 and a budget closing in on $1.5 million, Center for Health Progress’s mission is to create opportunities and eliminate barriers to health equity in Colorado.
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They do this by winning campaigns with strategic health equity goals and developing infrastructure and leadership for health equity across the state. The organization has intentionally operationalized DEI, with each department writing performance metrics that integrate inclusivity and equity. “Internally, we are trying to deepen our analysis and understanding of power and privilege, which leads to ongoing changes to all our internal and external policies and communications,” says McAfee.
“As a team, we have begun to unpack the ways language can be used as a tool of oppression or liberation. We’ve developed more equity-focused messaging and style guides and are working to incorporate language justice principles into our work. We bring in consultants to provide feedback on our communications and have diversified the voices that speak for our brand.
And, we don’t silo communications from the rest of the organization, because our communications work is stronger when it’s informed by the lived experiences of our entire team. It is important to us to prioritize and invest in DEI in everything we do; this is critical in helping us be the organization we want to be.”
McAfee says that she also learns from partners and practitioners in the field—“primarily incredibly smart, patient, generous women of color”—and finds communications from race-forward organizations more helpful in informing her own practice than the resources intended to support DEI communications. “I went through my email newsletter subscriptions and got rid of almost all the ones from majority-white organizations and replaced them with newsletters from organizations and news outlets with content written by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color,” she says. “The content is not specifically DEI, but the way they communicate—the words, the frame, the message—dramatically changed my understanding and perspective as a white person.” McAfee says that they seek advice and examples from partners as well, mentioning how the Colorado Children’s Campaign has a rule of “no naked numbers.”
This means that they never publish data without accompanying context, which is especially relevant to disparities data, where its critical to explain the historical or systemic context for why these disparities exist. “I have learned not to use the statement ‘Latino [or Latinx] people are nearly twice as likely as white people to have diabetes’ on its own, because my audience’s implicit bias may encourage any number of false narratives, such as that there are genetic differences between racial and ethnic groups or that personal responsibility is the reason some groups have worse health,” McAfee explains. “If we were to publish this statement, we would include substantial context around the history of systemic racism in the U.S. and how it has led to unequal health outcomes for people of color.”
“You may have to make massive shifts to structures and functions of your organization, and that takes investments of time and money. You cannot make DEI simply ‘a checklist’; that is inauthentic and ineffective.”
While these shifts are evidence of the work her organization is doing, McAfee makes it clear that DEI work is not about a few examples to follow; it is complex, organization-wide, and requires extensive commitment and resources. “You may have to make massive shifts to structures and functions of your organization, and that takes investments of time and money. You cannot make DEI simply ‘a checklist’; that is inauthentic and ineffective.”
Until we are more comfortable talking about race and racism, McAfee adds, it is hard to make true change in DEI practices, including communications. As Center for Health Progress has centered its work in racial justice, it has shifted focus to the systemic and structural factors that lead to healthcare failures – and changed their role in the work. “We want to shift power to community members directly affected by issues. If a communications campaign won’t successfully do this, we shouldn’t undertake it,” McAfee says. For example, she notes that op-eds can be useful tactics, but are usually written by someone in a position of power and targeted at someone else in a position of power, rather than making space for voices from the community. “It is not just in whose stories we tell, but how they are told, the words used to tell them, and the way we treat our storytellers,” she adds.
McAfee says that DEI is constantly and explicitly discussed in her organization and that her team knows they can hold her accountable when she makes mistakes. “I have made a lot of mistakes, but it is a learning process,” she says, advising, “If you ever feel comfortable, dial up the enthusiasm for and urgency of your learning. It’ll be a lifelong pursuit worth every second and cent of investment.”
