Cleveland’s Racism as a Public Health Crisis Coalition (RAPHC-C), the group tasked with advising city officials on how to address racial disparities in health, housing, education and other areas, says it’s delaying the release of its advice until it makes a formal report in 2024. 

This decision came after a Zoom meeting with more than 60 community leaders and city officials last week, more than three years after the coalition was established. The meeting offered little insight into the coalition’s progress.

The first half of the meeting included presentations that recapped information the coalition had reported at the group’s spring town hall. 

During the second half of the meeting, the coalition presented a list of possible strategies to reduce racial disparities in criminal justice, to boost access to healthy food, to reduce gun violence deaths and to advocate for accessible transportation and broadband internet access in Cleveland.

There was little discussion about the strategies in the meeting, and no findings were presented. 

The coalition had planned to do that in a town hall meeting scheduled for yesterday. But that changed after last Tuesday’s meeting.

“We just thought it would be best to rethink how we presented our strategies,” Gabrielle Fowlkes, project manager of RAPHC-C, told Signal Cleveland. 

Some are raising questions about the coalition’s apparent lack of progress. 

The coalition said it is aware of the frustration and believes it is valid. But the leaders are promising to deliver results and increase their engagement efforts in 2024.

“We are taking on this big challenge and big questions of solving racism,” Fowlkes said. “I don’t subscribe to the narrative that has been put out about us. It’s work that takes time and needs people to do it right.” 

An ambitious task 

In 2018, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, was the first community to declare racism a public health crisis. Many more cities and counties followed, passing resolutions especially after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

“These declarations are an important first step to advancing racial equity and justice and must be followed by allocation of resources and strategic action,” according to the American Public Health Association. APHA’s Racial Equity and Public Health fact sheet explains why.

In June of 2020, Cleveland City Council passed its own version. The resolution established a working group, which later became the RAPHC coalition. 

The coalition was tasked with drafting policies that would inform and guide city officials on different solutions to the health and wellness disparities of people of color and build partnerships with local organizations who focus on addressing the root causes of inequities in Cleveland. 

The resolution did not set deadlines. The group received $200,000 from the city in 2021 and $125,000 from JP Morgan Chase in 2021 and 2022. 

In 2021, the coalition hired ThirdSpace Action Lab, which provides consulting. In a 23-page report released in June of 2022, ThirdSpace outlined three key recommendations: 

• Select a specific model for the work RAPHC-C hopes to do, with a clear objective, audience, deliverable(s), theory of change, and value proposition to Cleveland.
• Continue to build out a strong, mutually supportive relationship with the City of Cleveland.
• Engage with the public in a way that allows grassroots community voices to help shape RAPHC-C’s work.

It is unclear if the executive committee adopted these specific recommendations. In 2022, the coalition received public criticism for its closed-door meetings and the lack of information reported about their overall progress and efforts. 

After the contract with ThirdSpace ended last summer, the coalition signed a new contract with Clear Impact, a different consulting firm, to help round out data collection and establish five focus areas to document their plans with the goal to move forward and publish a public report. 

More action, less talk 

More than 200 local government entities nationwide have passed similar resolutions over the last several years, but few have been funded, and even fewer have led to substantive policy results, according to a 2021 journal article from Frontiers in Public Health. 

Yvonka Hall, executive director of Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, told Signal Cleveland that while she commends the city for declaring racism as a public health crisis, she wants to see more action to hold officials accountable and less talk about strategies. 

“If they wanted to do something, they would embrace the [tobacco ban] legislation or put pressure on City Council to pass laws that will help our community,” said Hall. “We can say [racism is a public health crisis] on paper, but we also need to address it in practice.” 

Signal Cleveland has spoken with members of the coalition off record who have said they too are frustrated with the group’s lack of progress over the past few years. But they fear that speaking out could damage overall efforts to address the root causes of racial inequality in the city. 

Marsha Mockabee, co-chair of RAPHC-C, told Signal Cleveland the coalition has focused on gathering data and evaluating strategies for the city. It hasn’t developed a plan for advocacy, but it will consider that as they enter the next phase of the work. 

“The work [RAPHC-C] undertook was about looking at the [Cleveland] population-level data and trying to determine what strategies would begin to move the needle,” said Mockabee, who is the president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland.

“Advocacy [for these strategies] is going to be a question that will be asked as we move into the implementation phase,” Mockabee said. 

In May 2022, the coalition identified five focus areas in a presentation to City Council:

• Health, public health
• Housing, environment and infrastructure
• Education
• Economic mobility, wealth creation, and workforce development
• Criminal justice

Fowlkes said she does not agree with the portrayal that the coalition has been keeping information from the public. 

“We want to get this right,” Folwkes said. “We don’t want to invite people into chaos, especially when the groundwork of what we are doing hasn’t been laid out.” 

Fowlkes said some of the challenges the group has faced include not leaving residents out of the meetings but, rather, making sure the work that is being done actually results in effective change. 

“We want to create something that the community can love, appreciate and something that is stable and long term,” Fowlkes said. “There’s been too many times the community was left out of  the big ideas, organizations and conversations, resulting in trauma and mistrust. Our aim is to not do that.”