Board Official Statements

The OPHA Board of Directors occasionally considers and adopts formal statements. If you have questions or comments contact Executive Director Elisabeth Hartner.

• Statement on Texas abortion ban (adopted September 2021)
• Support and Solidarity with Asian, Asian-American Community (adopted March 2021)
• Anti-Racism (adopted May 2020)
• Statement on Coronavirus (adopted March 20, 2020)
• Climate Change (adopted January 2020)
• Water Fluoridation (adopted January 2020)
• Public Charge (adopted January 2020, revised February 2020 and April 2020)

Commitment to Health Equity and Anti-Racism

OPHA is working to become an anti-racist and health equity centered organization that centers values of community, partnership, inclusion and equity, learning, action, organizational sustainability, optimism and honesty. We believe in protecting and promoting health and health equity for all people in Oregon, especially those who experience systemic and structural inequities, including Black, Indigenous, and communities of color, immigrant and refugee, disability, undocumented, LGBTQIA+, rural, houseless, aging, farmworker, and others.

Strategic Goal

The Oregon Public Health Association is committed to being an anti-racist organization that puts our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion into practice. OPHA acknowledges the inequitable health outcomes, and the deep and lasting impacts of structural and pervasive racism on marginalized populations, in particular for communities of color. The OPHA Board of Directors, leadership, and staff will use the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Organizational Action Toolkit developed by the American Public Health Association as our guide. The Toolkit contains strategic and tactical day to day actions.

Definitions and Statements

Advocacy

OPHA’s commitment to antiracism and health equity is embedded in the legislative endorsements we support, many of which address the social determinants of health and social justice. Examples of past OPHA endorsements include paid family leave, the Climate Action Plan, requirements for multilingual prescription labels, diesel pollution reduction, increasing the minimum wage, and paid sick days.

In the summer of 2020, OPHA began convening a group of leaders which became known as the Oregon Health Equity Task Force, composed of BIPOC, Tribal, Mixed Race, Urban dwelling Indians/Urban Indians, Immigrant and Refugee, and white community leaders.

The Task Force came together to ask the state of Oregon to declare racism a public health crisis, develop strategies to address systemic and structural racism, and to acquire state funds to implement the strategies. In 2021, the task force was successful in their effort to declare racism a public health crisis in Oregon.