To make progress toward racial and Indigenous health equity, we work toward upstream solutions that target the root causes of inequities, like housing, education, food access and affordability, employment, and healthcare, all of which drive economic and other forms of opportunity. Core to this approach is the recognition that communities most impacted by systemic inequities hold valuable cultural assets, knowledge, power, lived experiences, and leadership necessary for creating meaningful change.

Research that is centered in and directly partnered with affected communities is a vital step toward shifting power imbalances within the system of knowledge production, policy advocacy, and issue prioritization. The purpose of this call for proposals is to meet the current moment through two approaches: to support timely, actionable health equity research that has been interrupted by shifts in federal funding; and support community-driven research that uplifts the knowledge, expertise, and power of historically marginalized racial and Indigenous communities to develop or test solutions that advance racial and Indigenous health equity.