Restuccia Health Justice Fellowship
Building the power of health justice leaders to reshape the US health system
To date, the Fellowship has:
- Established new partnerships and a shared network among fellows
- Expanded board, leadership, and partnerships for fellow organizations
- Launched an immigrant health academy
- Built a culture of accountability, radical candor, and reflection
- Developed overall capacity for fellowships organizations, including relationships with the media
This includes open communication about topics like the role of stress in race equity and health justice work, and how unmanaged stress can lead to disengagement and burnout. We also emphasize ways to integrate healing justice, liberation, and healing circles into our Fellows’ important work and causes. The Fellowship offers socially relevant content and guest speakers who share experiences that are rooted in reflection as well as tangible, applicable takeaways — especially regarding race equity.
Guiding PrinciplesGuiding Principles
The Restuccia Health Justice Fellowship has four guiding principles:
1. Advancing leadership development and teamwork
2. Organizational transformation
3. Powerful and unusual partnerships
4. Leadership through a race equity and health justice lens
Programmatic Elements
Core elements of the Restuccia Health Justice Fellowship are:
- Executive coaching
- Ongoing workshops with objectives that link back to the four guiding principles of the Fellowship
- Throughline of race equity and health justice
- Organizational transformation capstone: Each organizational team decides on an organizational transformation, which is shaped by the other program elements and the four guiding principles
Meet the Fellows
New York Cohort (2022-23)
The first inaugural cohort of regional Fellows brings together a community of emerging health advocacy leaders from organizations working on harm reduction, healthcare access, youth mental health, and Asian American and Pacific Island and immigrant equity.
As part of the Fellowship, each organization engages in an organizational transformation:
Children’s Defense Fund New York: Pass legislation to require mental health education and suicide prevention in public junior high and high schools
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families: Improve language access in health care settings
Make the Road New York: Create a state-funded health plan that covers New Yorkers up to 200 percent of the poverty level, regardless of their immigration status
Peer Network of New York: Improve pay, health benefits, and recognition for peer counselors who use their lived experiences to provide counseling and support to promote harm reduction
The JED Foundation: Require all schools in New York to have a comprehensive mental health program.
National Cohort (2022-23)
The Restuccia Health Justice Fellows – National cohort includes disability rights, anti poverty, and immigrant equity organizations. Comprised of three teams, each has an organizational transformation goal:
Better Family Life (Missouri): Adopt a culturally responsive service delivery model with a race equity lens
Disability Policy Consortium (Massachusetts): Foster deep, visible culture change at all levels of operations and priority setting through strategic implementation of racial justice frameworks and practices
Latino Coalition for a Healthy California (California): Implement a race equity framework that applies to human resources — including practices and policies, recruitment and retention, and individual giving campaigns.
