The PEACE Center

The PEACE Center examines how racism may be embedded in the public health profession, and therefore, inadvertently undermine health equity research and efforts to promote health justice through the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based practice.

The PEACE Center identifies successful strategies that diverse public health elders have historically used to navigate racism within the profession.

The PEACE Center also develops and evaluates an evidence-based teaching guide and curriculum that public health practitioners, teachers, researchers, and community members can use to respond to emerging threats to health equity and population health. This set of resources is intended to accompany the edited book Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional, 2nd Edition.

The PEACE Center is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

Mission

The PEACE Center applies theory and science to examine racism embedded in public health policies, practices, and institutions. It also builds the capacity of the public health profession to develop interventions that treat racism as a root cause of health inequities.

Objectives

All of our work is rooted in Public Health Critical Race Praxis. Through it, we seek to:

• Elucidate 21st century concepts that may be embedded in public health policies, practices, and approaches
• Document public health responses to emerging threats to health for all
• Bolster the capacity of public health professionals to develop effective interventions in response to emerging threats to health for all

Projects

The Sankofa Project 

The Sankofa Project gleans lessons learned about how to navigate institutional and overt forms of racism and other threats to health equity work from the experiences of health equity pioneers.

The SCIENCE Project

The Social Construction in Empirical Norms, Constructs, and Evidence (SCIENCE) Project identifies racialized biases in the public health evidence base and examines their role in shaping responses to health inequities.

Development and Evaluation of an Anti-Racism Teaching Guide & Curriculum

This project develops and evaluates a set of tools that can help extend the utility of the edited book Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional, 2nd Edition, which was named an outstanding academic title for 2025 by the Association of College Research Libraries' Choice Magazine.