Government officials and other leading experts called for strong action to address the nation’s long-standing disparities at a U.S. News forum on equity in America.

Addressing gaps in equity in America requires digging deep to find solutions in key problem areas like education, health care, election policy, and the economy, according to experts gathered Wednesday at U.S. News & World Report’s event on The State of Equity in America.

“Today, we hope to start down the road and engage in deep conversation, sharing information that will fuel ideas and policies that help disenfranchised Americans, those that seek opportunity, and help avail themselves of the equal benefits of our society,” said Eric J. Gertler, executive chairman and CEO of U.S. News & World Report.

The first panel, “Examining Equity in America,” set the stage for the event, exploring how inequities have become deeply embedded across American institutions, from classrooms and board rooms to operating rooms and voting booths.

“Where’s the system blinking red?” asked Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO and executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. “It’s in the fact that we have yet to address the structural foundation of racism and other ‘isms’ and biases that pervade this nation, and even this world.”

American Education: Separate and Unequal?

The forum featured two panels that touched on education, one that focused on the 21st-century fight for equal opportunities and another that explored how colleges are prioritizing mental health and neurodiversity on campus.

In the first panel, Denise Forte, the president and CEO of The Education Trust, said an equitable system looks like a well-resourced system – one that “really centers students first” and provides individualized learning as well as things like good technology, great teachers and secure buildings.

Catherine E. Lhamon, the assistant secretary for civil rights with the Department of Education, noted that this summer, “we will live our sixth decade” since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, “a congressional promise that no person will experience discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin.”

But she said that “the reality is that of today, our schools are in many places more segregated than they were in 1954 when the Brown v. Board of Education decision came out.”

The second education-related panel, which touched on neurodiversity on campus, explored how academic leaders and other stakeholders can take steps to address the mental health crisis on college campuses – a phenomenon underscored by a recent U.S. News/Generation Lab poll that found that mental health was among the biggest concerns of university students.

Alfiee Breland-Noble, a psychologist and founder of The AAKOMA Project, noted that data she’s collected shows that over 50% of young people across racial and ethnic lines are reporting significant experiences with moderate to severe anxiety and depression.

She also expressed concern about a tendency to split the identities of students and talk about them as part of one group or another, adding that this causes challenges that many campuses have yet to solve.

The day also featured a conversation with Jonathan Koppell, the president of Montclair State University, which touched on making higher education more accessible for students who lack the resources of those going to more high-profile universities. When asked by the moderator if “the kids are alright,” Koppell said that while many are, many aren’t.

He noted that the success of students at his university is evidence “of what happens when you do have equity in opportunity” and are attentive to challenges, and that the opportunities for students with degrees from the “right” universities are different than for those with degrees from universities like Montclair.

“The reality is that the marginal changes in who gets into the Harvards, the Yales of the world, that’s not going to achieve equity in this country,” he said, adding the real fix is to “create opportunities for people who go to the vast majority of institutions, which are not premised on exclusion.”

A ZIP Code Can’t Be a Death Sentence

Forum speakers emphasized the importance of centering health equity throughout the life cycle, from infancy through childhood, college and beyond. In the “Examining Maternal Health Equity” panel, participants decried the status of maternal mortality overall, and for Black women in particular.

Jasmaine McClain, the executive director of Health Equity Alliance at The Health Management Academy, said that there’s been a lot of “quibble” over the data behind America’s comparatively high maternal mortality rate, but that everyone can agree “we’re not thriving from a maternal care perspective.”

Mylynn Tufte, partner at Optum Advisory Services, agreed, calling the U.S. an “underperformer” compared to its developed peers. “Maternal mortality, we’re failing in this area,” she said, adding that 6.9 million women live in maternal care deserts. “When you think about the cost of not treating maternal mental health,” she said, “there’s so much we need to act on.”

Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois took the opportunity to urge participants to contact their lawmakers and encourage them to pass every aspect of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, a series of 13 individual bills that aim to address the drivers of maternal mortality. She noted that the act started out as nine bills but was quickly expanded to 13.

“We need to get this enacted at our first legislative opportunity, which means now,” she said. “Inaction means more death.”

In the following panel, which looked at the health of the American health system, Jean C. Accius, the president and CEO of Creating Healthier Communities, noted that there is a cost of inaction when dealing with health gaps.

“Your ZIP code should not be a death sentence within this United States or frankly around the world,” he said, adding there’s an opportunity to “work across sectors and industries to collectively solve these issues together, because no one organization can do it in isolation.”

Dr. Richard E. Besser, the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, argued many of the forum panels could actually be considered health panels, given how key overall health is to addressing equity in America. “If you’re not addressing the economy and economic inclusion and you’re not addressing education – not addressing any of these things – no one can lead a healthy life,” he said.

In a fireside chat with U.S. News Editorial Director Dafna Linzer, Dr. R. Lawrence “Larry” Moss, president and CEO of Nemours Children’s Health, spoke about how focusing on population health, building partnerships and fostering “whole child health” is the pathway to creating a healthier population and a more equitable health system.

Making the Nation’s Economic System Work for Those in the Middle

In several sessions, experts spoke about the ways stakeholders from all levels of society could work together to create economic opportunity for all Americans.

In one panel, Nasir Qadree, founder and managing partner at Zeal Capital Partners, said the key to “turbocharging economic mobility” across the U.S. lies between health care, the future of work and learning, and the way we think about financial services.

In another, Tawan Davis, founding partner and CEO at The Steinbridge Group, noted that while people with more money “can buy anything they darn well please,” it’s the people in the middle who form the backbone of the American economy who are the most dramatically impacted by housing price changes.

Janis Bowdler, counselor to the secretary for racial equity at the Treasury Department, said that the biggest driver of the wealth gap is that wealth is generational, and not everyone is born with affluent parents.

She noted that the federal government bears some responsibility for the gap.
“It is investments from the federal sector and public sector, in particular, that have built the middle class,” she said, adding that people of color have been blocked from those opportunities and “they have exacerbated over time.”

During the conference’s closing conversation, Don Graves, U.S. deputy secretary of commerce, underscored the importance of America investing in its long-term economic health. Graves, who has played a role in federal efforts aiding the economic recoveries of Puerto Rico and the city of Detroit, stressed that creating a stronger economy – and positioning the U.S. as a global technology leader – requires creating diverse opportunities for a diverse range of workers.

“If we want a stronger economy, if we want to succeed as a country in the global environment, if we want to win in producing the best chips, if we want to make sure that we’re leading in supercomputing, if we want to drive clean tech and biotech – we have to invest in ways that opens up doors and opportunities for businesses and people of all types in every corner of the country,” he said.

The Rule of Law Is in Peril

During the panel, “How State Voting Laws Will Affect the 2024 Election,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold spoke about the nearly 900 violent threats she received following a legal challenge to former President Donald Trump’s 2024 eligibility to appear on the state’s primary ballot on the basis of the insurrection clause in the Constitution. The case was later decided by the Supreme Court when it ruled in favor of Trump. She noted that Americans can disagree about how a law is executed or how the Constitution is interpreted, but they must agree that America’s institutions have a final say. Pointing to the recent conclusion of Trump’s New York City hush money trial and the backlash from the 34 guilty count verdict, Griswold said that some people no longer believe in the concept of a final decision and that it is “putting the rule of law in peril.”

“There was either someone who tried to steal the 2020 election or there was not, but we cannot allow the rewriting of American history to fit a political narrative,” she said.

“There are not two sides to the truth.”

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