Journey Map

Transforming Academia for Equity

Why This Work Matters

American schools and programs of public health were built on structures that reward a narrow set of voices. Promotion criteria, research funding priorities, and institutional policies have historically favored faculty from historically dominant backgrounds pursuing conventional research topics. As a result, scholars who are not part of these historically preferred groups face systemic barriers to professional success. When scholars with lived experience of oppression face barriers due to traditional academic structure and systems, health equity research that communities urgently need is compromised.

The Transforming Academia for Equity (TAE) initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was created to acknowledge and eliminate barriers within specific geographic and historic context. TAE includes schools and programs of public health across the country to identify and dismantle exclusionary practices – and to build inclusive institutions where diverse scholars can thrive professionally and personally.

A diverse academic workforce brings varied perspectives and lived experiences that produce better, more relevant research. That research, in turn, helps build equitable and health communities that serve everyone.

How We Support the Work

The TAE Coordinating Center, a Change Matrix initiative, includes researchers, evaluators, university faculty, and experienced facilitators. We walk alongside TAE grantee institutions, providing coaching, consultation, and structured support as they navigate deep institutional change and participate with each other in a learning community.  

We are guided by the Leading Through Change Framework (LTCF), which draws on established models of organizational change and adaptive leadership. The framework recognizes that meaningful institutional transformation requires both careful preparation and sustained engagement with the people doing the work. It unfolds across a cycle of three interconnected iterative phases.

About

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” -Barack Obama 

Academic institutions have evolved over time based on historical priorities and interests. The result has been to continue promotion and reward structures that disproportionately advantage faculty from mainstream backgrounds who often propose white-normed research approaches and topics. While institutional racism started a long time ago, academic structures and policies – and their impacts – have evolved and remain. Current institutional leaders play a critical role in identifying and dismantling racist, exclusionary practices and policies that ultimately impact the type and quality of health equity research produced by historically underrepresented researchers and its subsequent impact on communities and society. 

The Transforming Academia for Equity (TAE) initiative, conceptualized and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), originated from the belief that a diverse academic workforce encompasses varied perspectives and lived experiences and is well positioned to advance research agendas and opportunities for many qualified scholars—especially indigenous and racially excluded groups, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ persons, and others. TAE is designed to unpack, understand, and shape the contextual and intervening conditions necessary for underrepresented scholars to thrive professionally and personally—and in turn, be better able to contribute to and expand health equity-related research and evidence that can help build a Culture of Health

TAE Journey

As the TAE Coordinating Center, Change Matrix leverages the collective strength of our partnerships, bringing together a diverse team of researchers, evaluators, university faculty, and experienced capacity builders – known as Adaptive Change Specialists – who use innovative and virtual techniques to support the change efforts of TAE grantees in schools and programs of public health across the country. Our Leading Through Change FrameworkTM (LTCF), which builds upon multiple leadership and change frameworks (i.e., Prochaska and DiClemente’s Stages of Change, John Kotter’s 8-Stage Model of Change, Implementation Science, and Ron Heifetz’s Adaptive Leadership), provides a structured approach for guiding organizations through complex change processes. Grounded in principles of Adaptive Leadership, the framework recognizes that meaningful organizational change requires both intentional preparation of conditions and ongoing engagement of people throughout the process. It outlines three interconnected phases that help organizations move from understanding the current landscape to sustaining long-term transformation – creating conditions for change, engaging diverse voices for action, and implementing and sustaining the work.

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We assembled the team.

The Coordinating Center brought together a diverse group of experts who use innovative techniques to support grantees across the country. We formed our own learning community.

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TAE
Coordinating Center Established

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We assembled the team.

The Coordinating Center brought together a diverse group of experts who use innovative techniques to support grantees across the country. We formed our own learning community.

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Grantee Application & Selection

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We created a process and selected grantee institutions intentionally.

Working with RWJF, we designed an application process that identified schools and programs of public health at different starting points in their equity journeys - some further along, some just beginning.

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Visioning & Establishing Structures and Norms

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We dug into institutional history and current reality.

Each grantee examined the origins of their current systems, traditions, and policies – and observed how these structures evolved to create and sustain disparities within their schools.

We brought people together.

In 2022, we convened the first "TAE Learns Together" meeting, creating space for honest reflection and collective imagination about what equity leadership could look like.

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Facilitation was masterful and really got us to have an honest and healthy conversation that was “unsafe” in a good way. The collective wisdom of the group was astonishing. — TAE Grantee

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Developing & Maintaining Relationships

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We developed a shared vision.

Grantees worked to articulate what equity actually looks like in their schools and to chart a realistic institutional path toward that vision. Importantly, teams expanded their definitions of success and leadership.

We built relationships.

Through collaborative consultation and coaching, we supported students, staff, and faculty to lead TAE work within their institutions, encouraging them to engage university leaders and community members as the work evolved.

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Learning was primarily supported by [the Adaptive Change Specialists], who encouraged the GT to think beyond traditional grant deliverables and center the work on the vision for and values of this work. In addition, peer-to-peer connections with other grantees were useful in understanding how people in similar positions at other universities were experiencing and responding to similar challenges in academia. — TAE Grantee

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We expanded our versions and visions of success to include success at a more local and controllable level (e.g., equity as part of vision of DPH, support for researchers at all levels including students to do health equity work, identifying partners across campus, identifying who was ready to do the work now). We also expanded our definitions of a leader from formal leadership positions to emergent leaders based on action and mentorship around equity. — TAE Grantee

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Scenic Views

Broad vision allowed space for innovation

Interntionally selecting grantees that were at different starting points in transforming academia for equity

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Roadblocks & Detours

Differing expectations with a grant process unfamiliar to individuals in academia

Time and work was required to build a shared vision to find a collective path forward and build a community of learners.

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We assembled the team.

The Coordinating Center brought together a diverse group of experts who use innovative techniques to support grantees across the country. We formed our own learning community.

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Establishing
Guiding Teams

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Grantees formed Guiding Teams.

These teams deliberately included the people most affected by institutional policies - primarily students, staff, and faculty - along with university leaders and community members.

Teams assessed their environments.

Grantees examined how social, political, and institutional landscapes had shifted and what those changes meant for their equity strategies.

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Our guiding team served as a learning community, in which we learned to navigate power and privilege, naming racism and intersecting systems of oppression, and holding space.” - TAE grantee — TAE Grantee

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We have successfully initiated the Climate Assessment... This assessment is a critical step in understanding the current state of equity, diversity, and inclusion within our organization. — TAE Grantee

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Through [the TAE initiative], we were reminded that this is a journey without an end point. Success is moving this work forward. It is engaging deeply with identifying the barriers and making a realistic and strategic plan to address them incrementally. This can be challenging when we want to quickly generate solutions, but we understand that for perspective shifts this will take time. — TAE Grantee

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A key component of the TAE initiatives’ success [is] the freedom that grantees [are] extended to develop non-prescriptive activities for imaging and addressing their justice, equity, diversity and inclusion needs. — TAE Grantee

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Catalytic Conversations

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Teams created and revised equity action plans.

Each grantee developed a strategic plan, then participated in structured mid-course reviews to assess progress and adapt to changing conditions.

We facilitated cross-institutional learning.

Regular learning community sessions brought grantees together to explore shared challenges around institutional culture, leadership, and the broader political environment affecting equity work.

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Ongoing Touchpoints Between Guiding Teams & Adaptive Change Specialists

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Adaptive Change Specialists provided hands-on support.

Through coaching, consultation, and facilitation, specialists helped institutional leaders navigate the complexities of change - joining guiding team meetings, conducting site visits, and providing ongoing touchpoints.

We celebrated progress.

Peer learning sessions regularly included space to recognize milestones and early wins, reinforcing momentum and sustaining commitment.

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Scenic Views

Grantees form a community of practive to support aone another and inform croader academic equity efforts

On-site, in-person touchpoints built credibility and community, leading grantees to demonstreate ownership of the work

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Roadblocks & Detours

Transition of members in the TAE CC team

Time and work were required to develop a shared vision, a collective path forward, and the conditions for a learning community to form

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We assembled the team.

The Coordinating Center brought together a diverse group of experts who use innovative techniques to support grantees across the country. We formed our own learning community.

Action Pilot Implement Refine Iterate Learn
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Implementing and Sustaining the Work (2024 - present)

The third phase of the LTCF focuses on translating momentum into lasting change. TAE leaders build on the progress made, encouraging experimentation and innovation as the organization moves into new ways of operating. This stage often requires stepping into the unknown, as GTs test new approaches – pilot, implement, learn, iterate, refine, take action – and adapt based on what they learn.

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As a result of the learning and experiences gained during the implementation of our initiatives, we became more fearless and bold in our approach to enacting transformative change in the field of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. — TAE Grantee

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Scenic Views

Cycle of learning established

Each grantee identified and piloted an action to create more inclusive environments at their institutions

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Roadblocks & Detours

Socio-political climate and backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion created fear, legal concerns, and heightened security needs for grantees

Grantees paused or pivoted their work in response to the climate

Hesitation increased around sharing or disseminating work

Continuing the Journey

Determine:

  • How to make progress despite the socio-political climate and backlash
  • Opportunities to sustain progress
  • Ways to continue transforming academia for equity

Why This Matters

When academic institutions create and maintain environments that serve traditional academic goals, the research they produce does not include ways of knowing that benefit communities. TAE shows that institutions can change through honest self-examination, shared leadership, and sustained commitment to equity. The change is iterative, occurs at a human level, and is hard. The lessons emerging from this initiative have implications far beyond public health schools. They offer a roadmap for any institution ready to ask hard questions about who it serves and who it leaves behind.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” — Barack Obama

 

Any system, particularly one that has such a direct impact on both community health and well-being as well as the future workforce should understand and acknowledge historic traditions and assumptions that continue to exist and provide unnecessary and harmful barriers to diverse scholars and our ways of knowing. We must transform academia for equity as a critical factor in achieving health equity.