Our Racial Equity Policy

As an organization committed to culturally-specific care focused on African American health, we have worked diligently since our founding to ensure our clinic is an affirming, safe, and welcoming space for African American community members. Over these years, we have established specific policies, procedures, and approaches that speak to our deep valuing of racial equity. Our Racial Equity Policy, drafted by NxNE staff and approved by our board on December 6, 2019, gathers those principles and approaches in one document, institutionalizes our commitment to racial equity, calls us to a more racially equitable vision for our organization, and establishes a plan for accountability to our racial equity vision.

Download Our Racial Equity Policy

Racial Equity Policy

Opening statement

North by Northeast Community Health Center is committed to working against structural, institutional
and individual racism, particularly in healthcare and in the nonprofit workplace.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge that:

The historic and present-day reality of racism is embedded in our institutions and systems, which means that white people in the US have far more privilege, power and access than people of color. This results in poorer outcomes in almost every category for people of color, from health to education to wages.
In Multnomah County, African American/Black people experience the greatest number of serious health disparities. ¹ These lead to higher rates of death from chronic health conditions. We believe that racism is a primary reason for these health disparities.
The majority of nonprofit organizations in Portland are led by white people, according to white norms. In this way, the nonprofit industry helps to maintain white dominance, which causes harm to people of color. As a nonprofit, North by Northeast is not immune to this. Therefore, we have used and will continue to use our resources and power to move North by Northeast toward a more racially equitable vision for our organization.

Vision

We envision North by Northeast as:

A safe space where African American/Black cultural norms are celebrated and embraced, and where every effort is made to ensure services and care are free from the negative impacts of racism and implicit bias.
A health clinic where everyone who walks through our doors is treated with respect and empathy and where patients are empowered to advocate for themselves.
A workplace where staff will have racial equity as a core value, both in their work and personal lives.
A model for other nonprofits of an organizational culture and structure that operate according to racial equity values.

Our promise

Partnerships/contracts: We economically empower the African American/Black community by making a conscious effort to seek out and contract with African American/Black-owned businesses and vendors. We ask partner organizations, including funders, what their racial equity values or policies are, and use “commitment to racial equity in word and action,” as a criterion when deciding who to partner with or seek funding from. We strive to make connections with other African American/Black-focused organizations that meet our community’s needs.

Human resources: We hire staff and recruit board members and volunteers who are racially representative of the community we serve because we recognize the immeasurable worth of lived
experience and community relationships in moving NxNE’s mission forward. In posting job openings, we
prioritize culturally-specific media and community networks to get the word out. Our job postings include a salary/wage range. For each open position, we appoint a hiring committee to conduct interviews; the hiring committee is racially representative of the community we serve and includes at least one patient or former patient. We periodically request input from staff on the type and range of benefits provided. We provide opportunities for staff to train in their areas of work, areas of professional development that are of interest to them, and areas that may help them move into leadership and decision-making roles within the organization. When setting compensation for a new staff member, we take into account the value of that staff member’s lived experience and community relationships. We are transparent with staff on how compensation increases and bonuses are awarded. We strive to ensure NxNE is a safe and comfortable place for all people of color to be employed.

Patient and community input: We give patients the opportunity to provide confidential feedback on the care they have received, and we direct any race-based concerns to our Racial Equity Committee for review. We request and respond to feedback and input from our patients and community members about the services and programs they would like to see. We treat our patients’ and community members’ lived experience as an area of expertise. We demonstrate this by paying individuals for their time spent contributing that expertise (for example, participating in a focus group or sharing their story in our newsletter). We ask partners and those seeking input from our patients to do the same.
Patient care: We require all members of our clinical team, whether paid or volunteer, to complete training in racial equity and culturally-appropriate care. We maintain a culture of continuous clinical quality improvement. We conduct an annual review of targeted health outcomes by race and respond to any
identified disparities. We empower patients to be active participants in their own care.

Healthcare workforce: A diverse clinical workforce has been demonstrated to positively impact health outcomes for marginalized groups.² We are committed to increasing the representation of African American/Black individuals within the health care workforce and within our own clinical staff. When hiring for clinical roles we make every effort to promote our job openings among African American/Black candidates. We actively seek the participation of African American/Black students and residents when providing preceptorship opportunities for medical students and residents.

Statement on this policy

We consider this racial equity policy to be a living document, adaptable and responsive to input from
current and future staff members, patients, board members, and stakeholders. The policy was written by
North by Northeast staff members in 2019, reviewed by the Patient Wellness Council on October 16, 2019
and approved by the Board of Directors on December 6, 2019.

This policy establishes a Racial Equity Committee, which will include four members – two staff members,
one Patient Wellness Council member, and one board member. The committee will:

Serve as North by Northeast’s experts on how organizational issues and decisions impact or are impacted by our stated racial equity values.
Ensure that staff members are given sufficient and regular opportunities to surface racial equity issues and concerns.
Respond to concerns or feedback from patients that have a race or racial equity component to them.
Hold North by Northeast accountable to operating according to this Racial Equity Policy, by raising as well as responding to questions/concerns from others (staff, patients, board and/or Patient Wellness Council members) about North by Northeast’s adherence to the policy.
Annually review this Racial Equity Policy and, as needed, recommend changes.

Definitions

This policy uses the following definitions:

Health disparities: preventable differences in disease, injuries, violence, and opportunities that prevent people of color from achieving optimal health in comparison to white people.
Individual racism: face-to-face or covert actions toward a person that intentionally express prejudice, hate or bias based on race.
Institutional racism: the policies and practices specifically within and across institutions (e.g. the military, schools, the court system) that produce outcomes that chronically disadvantage people and communities of color.
Racial equity: the condition where one’s racial identity does not determine how one fares in society.
Racism: prejudice and power that results in a system that creates negative consequences for people of color.
Structural racism: the social, economic and political system in which we all exist and in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial inequity.
White dominance: a historically-based, institutionally-perpetuated system of abuse and oppression against people of color that maintains wealth, power and privilege for whites.
White norms: common characteristics and tendencies of most United States white people that society deems as “normal.”

¹ “2014 Report Card on Racial and Ethnic Disparities,” Multnomah County Health Department.
² “Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland”, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2019.