Just Leaders for a Just Health System (JUSTICE SQUARED) Grant Program

Overview

_Note: The deadline for Phase 1 of the application process is represented by the pre-proposal deadline and the deadline for the Phase 2 application process is represented by the full proposal deadline.  Finalists of Phase 1 will be selected based on a review of their application and will be invited to submit applications for Phase 2._

Just Leaders for a Just Health System (JUSTICE SQUARED)

Structural racism runs through the air we breathe and the water we drink. Depending on who and where we are—our level of exposure—it can be toxic and make us sick. And yet, when people turn to healthcare expecting to be healed, the air and water there, too, can be deadly. Many healthcare organizations have courageously begun to address racism to advance health equity, and are finding that real system change is complex. Many communities have attempted to address racism in the healthcare system but don’t feel seen or heard. Transforming complex systems is hard and can feel overwhelming, especially in the face of active threats to justice—if we’re trying to tackle structural racism alone.

That’s why WE in the World, which brings decades of experience in creating practical, impactful, structural change to advance health equity, is forming the JUSTICE SQUARED collective, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Just Leaders for a Just Health System (JUSTICE SQUARED) invites healthcare organizations and patient and community leaders to engage in a trustworthy, humble, and courageous journey to confront structural racism in healthcare together. We are looking to recruit healthcare organizations that are already committed to this charge and invested in this critical work.

JUSTICE SQUARED will equip up to 12 teams of five core healthcare and community leaders with $300,000 ($400,000 for safety-net institutions) in funding over two years. Teams will take a guided journey focused on learning and action with a comprehensive support system of racial justice and system change transformation experts, as they take practical action together to change organizational policies and practices to address structural racism. JUSTICE SQUARED makes this complex journey of dismantling structural racism easier to navigate by supporting healthcare organizations to either

* shift how they measure and account for racism (not just race)
* or
* remove racism from clinical, operational, and administrative diagnostics and algorithms.

Equally important, JUSTICE SQUARED will encourage leaders to reimagine the relationships between healthcare organizations and the communities they serve through the formation of lasting partnerships to co-create a healthcare system that is trustworthy, healing, and just. Together, healthcare and community changemakers will lead with an intentional focus on equity, creating accountability structures that ensure progress is measured and sustained.

Eligibility

_We've imported the main document for this grant to give you an overview. You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's [website]().pdf).
_

Application Details

JUST LEADERS for a JUST HEALTH SYSTEM (JUSTICE SQUARED)
CallforProposals
OverviewofJUSTICESQUAREDInitiative
Structural racism runs through the air we breathe and the water we drink. Depending on who and
where we are—our level of exposure—it can be toxic and make us sick. And yet, when people turn to
healthcare expecting to be healed, the air and water there, too, can be deadly. Many healthcare
organizations have courageously begun to address racism to advance health equity, and are finding that
real system change is complex. Many communities have attempted to address racism in the healthcare
system but don’t feel seen or heard. Transforming complex systems is hard and can feel overwhelming,
especially in the face of active threats to justice—if we’re trying to tackle structural racism alone.
That’s why WE in the World,1 which brings decades of experience in creating practical, impactful,
structural change to advance health equity, is forming the JUSTICE SQUARED collective, supported by
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Just Leaders for a Just Health System (JUSTICE SQUARED)
invites healthcare organizations and patient and community leaders to engage in a trustworthy, humble,
and courageous journey to confront structural racism in healthcare together. We are looking to recruit
healthcare organizations that are already committed to this charge and invested in this critical work.
JUSTICE SQUARED will equip up to 12 teams of five core healthcare and community leaders with
$300,000 ($400,000 for safety-net institutions) in funding over two years. Teams will take a guided
journey focused on learning and action with a comprehensive support system of racial justice and system
change transformation experts, as they take practical action together to change organizational policies
and practices to address structural racism. JUSTICE SQUARED makes this complex journey of
dismantling structural racism easier to navigate by supporting healthcare organizations to either (1) shift
how they measure and account for racism (not just race) or (2) remove racism from clinical, operational,
and administrative diagnostics and algorithms.
Equally important, JUSTICE SQUARED will encourage leaders to reimagine the relationships between
healthcare organizations and the communities they serve through the formation of lasting partnerships
to co-create a healthcare system that is trustworthy, healing, and just. Together, healthcare and
community changemakers will lead with an intentional focus on equity, creating accountability structures
that ensure progress is measured and sustained.
1AwardswillcomefromWell-beingandEquityintheWorld,whichwillberesponsibleforfinalselection.

What will JUSTICE SQUARED teams get?
1. Teams will receive a $300,000 grant ($400,000 for safety-net institutions) over a
two-year period to advance their work to address structural racism in the
healthcare system,2 which should be equitably allocated to support:
a. The time and participation of all healthcare and community core team members who
will lead the work of the collective leadership process
b. The engagement and meaningful participation of people with lived experience of the
racial inequities that the healthcare organization is planning to work on (including
attendance at leadership academies and in community engagement efforts)
c. Collective processes, including community engagement costs and convening costs for
Racial Equity Action Labs (food, honoraria for community members, childcare, etc.)
d. Travel costs for the core leadership team to attend five 3.5-day JUSTICE SQUARED
leadership academies
e. A customized pool of specialty coaches and other technical assistance supports the team
might require
The portion of funding allocated to community members will be awarded to them directly
through either a fiscal sponsor of their choice or one provided through WE in the World.
Additional details can be found in the budget guidance document. Please note: no budget is
required until an applicant reaches the finalist stage. At that time, the WE in the World team will
work closely with finalists to help support them in developing their budgets.
2. Teams will be assisted by the JUSTICE SQUARED Support System, which includes:
a. A structured learning and action collaborative, including five 3.5-day
transformational leadership academies with JUSTICE SQUARED teams across the
country and action periods with dedicated supports
b. Two dedicated coaches per team—one with community/collective leadership
experience and one with healthcare organizational change experience
c. Customized support for each core team from experienced technical assistance
providers (with dedicated funding for each team to access what they might need at
different times)
d. The JUSTICE SQUARED learning, data, and technology ecosystem, including
access to special training resources on collective leadership and structural racism to
meet the needs of diverse team members, realtime data and tools about experiences of
structural racism, and simulations and toolkits to address policy and legal challenges
2The grant opportunity outlined in this call for proposals is contingent upon final funding confirmation
from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for such grants.
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e. Peer learning circles designed for teams to give and gain feedback/inspiration from
one another
f. Resilience and healing resources to build healing, rest, and joy into the journey
g. Learning and evaluation activities to learn, improve, and measure progress
What will JUSTICE SQUARED teams work on?
JUSTICE SQUARED teams will:
1. Share power and accountability across healthcare and patients/communities experiencing
healthcare inequities
2. Create tangible structural change through one of these two shifts:
● Shift 1: How we measure and account for racism (not just race). For example:
○ Are wait times much longer for people of color or for those on Medicaid
compared with patients on commercial insurance?
○ Is financial assistance being proactively and respectfully offered to all groups? Are
medical debt collection practices reinforcing inequities for communities of color?
○ Do catchment areas for community benefits resemble racially gerrymandered
maps?
● Shift 2: Removing racism from clinical, operational, and administrative diagnostics and
algorithms. For example:
○ Removing race from glomerular filtration rate (GFR) measurement (and other
examples of race-based corrections that have been demonstrated to create
harm)
○ Seeing whether social assessment protocols preclude some groups from
receiving organ transplants by eliminating those who have greater social needs
○ Identifying whether protocols for the geographic placement of new healthcare
sites are designed to avoid communities of color
3. Build lasting change through changes in organizational policies and practices and trustworthy and
accountable relationships with communities experiencing inequities, grounded in love, joy, and
justice.
Teams will need to identify a shift and an area of challenge within that shift that they have identified with
their community to work on as part of their application, but will be able to change this if they decide it is
more important to focus on another area.
More details about each of these and the JUSTICE SQUARED learning journey can be found at
https://justicesquared.org/.
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What will JUSTICE SQUARED teams be expected to do?
With training, accompaniment, and support, recipients of JUSTICE SQUARED awards will be expected
to engage actively in the JUSTICE SQUARED learning and action collaborative through:
1. Working to shift their healthcare system through collective leadership
a. Developing the strength of their collective leadership team and healthcare organization
to understand and address structural racism
b. Mapping the system to identify structural inequities
c. Developing a strategy and plan to address structural racism in one of the two shift areas
d. Building their local collective process to create a change in the system
e. Building an equitable governance process for accountability of the improvement work
within and among the participant team and with communities experiencing inequities
2. Actively participating in and contributing to the JUSTICE SQUARED learning
collaborative and community
a. Attending two to three in-person JUSTICE SQUARED leadership academies per year
(each lasting 3.5 days) and actively participating in each action period between leadership
academies
b. Meeting regularly (at least weekly or every other week, depending on phase) with your
core team, core coaches, and specialty coaches
c. Participating in monthly virtual sessions to collaborate with other collective leadership
teams and providing peer support along the journey
d. Engaging in affinity groups
e. Sharing data and stories of progress along the journey—good, bad, and ugly
What will healthcare organizations need to commit?
We are looking for healthcare organizations who are already invested in advancing health equity and
racial justice and are ready to partner with their community in this initiative. We are asking all
non-safety-net healthcare organizations to co-invest $100,0003 in matching resources (a combination of
financial and in-kind) to support teams as part of demonstrating their own readiness to sustain support.
This match should not come from community benefit dollars that would have been allocated to directly
support communities (but can come from an allocation of staffing resources to support participation of a
team member). Additional details can be found in the budget guidance document.
For safety-net institutions and nonprofits with budgets less than $5 million that are serving a
disproportionately underserved population with significant health inequities, this match will be provided
by JUSTICE SQUARED (hence the difference in total grant award of $400,000 versus $300,000). If
selected as a finalist, an applicant will need to detail how this match will support the core team.
3Justunder$100,000isacceptableifitfacilitatesapproval.
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Who are we looking for? (Eligibility)
We are looking for up to 12 collective leadership teams from healthcare organizations that have
demonstrated commitment to advancing health equity in partnership with patients and communities.
Teams can come from nonprofit or for-profit corporations and need to be actively engaged in delivering
healthcare services to a population with historical health inequities. Large healthcare systems that cover
many geographies can have multiple teams apply, but they need to provide matching resources for each
team.
What kind of collective leadership teams are we looking for?
Change begins with each of us and needs all of us. JUSTICE SQUARED centers shared leadership and
accountability, recognizing that no single leader, organization, or community can dismantle structural
racism alone. When people who understand how the system works and people who have experienced
inequity in healthcare come together, they can see the whole picture of how racism is operating. They
can then use this collaborative diagnosis to treat, heal, and reshape their organizations and rebuild trust.
By coming together and leading change together, they can see the system, change the system, and begin
a practice of being accountable to one another and their community. The core team structure of
JUSTICE SQUARED reflects this philosophy and seeks to balance power and accountability. Members of
the core team must include the following roles and each member must participate in all core JUSTICE
SQUARED activities intended for that role.
1. One community co-facilitator—grounded in the community, helps to co-lead the systems
change process, offers shared decision-making and governance, assures effective community
engagement and leadership, engages a wider community to be part of the process
2. One healthcare co-facilitator—grounded in the healthcare organization, helps to co-lead the
systems change process, offers shared decision-making and governance, assures effective power
sharing in the team, engages multidisciplinary leaders across the healthcare system to be part of
the process
3. A patient or community contributor—brings lived experience to the area of health system
inequity/shift the team is thinking about working on
4. A healthcare contributor—brings content knowledge or system knowledge about the area
of health system inequity/shift the team is thinking about working on
5. A senior leader—helps to remove barriers to systems change processes, secures resources,
and so forth. This can be the executive sponsor if that person is able to commit the time and
energy required to be a full member of the team.
Application Process
The application process involves two phases.
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PHASE 1 will include the following steps:
1. Registration in the application portal to indicate potential intent to apply by a subset of core
team members (e.g., executive sponsor, healthcare and community co-leads) by December 15,
2024. This is highly recommended as it will allow the WE in the World team to offer additional
support to these team members, who will each need to fill out a portion of the application.
2. An application describing your full core team, your community, your healthcare organization,
past experience tackling structural racism and health inequities, and motivation to engage in
JUSTICE SQUARED to be submitted by January 15, 2025. The executive sponsor will need to
prepare a formal nomination of the healthcare organization, the team, and a letter of support,
and community and healthcare co-leads will each need to fill out a portion of the application.
3. Submission of additional letters of support, also due by January 15, 2025:
a. 1 or 2 letters of support from community organization(s) (beyond the community
co-lead) are strongly encouraged.
b. A letter of support from a broader group at the regional or national level that is familiar
with your work is highly encouraged.
Finalists will be selected based on review of the above and will be invited to submit applications for
Phase 2 by February 19, 2025.
PHASE 2 will include the following steps:
1. Core team interviews with a panel of reviewers, including JUSTICE SQUARED Stewardship
Council members, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation staff, and other racial and health equity
experts, to take place between March 3 and March 31, 2025.
2. Completion of a team self-assessment and action plan, using a special tool called BEACON for
Justice, due by April 2, 2025.
3. Submission of a budget by April 2, 2025.
4. Additional information requested based on Phase 1 submitted information, due April 2, 2025.
Applications must be submitted through the JUSTICE SQUARED application portal, hosted by WE in the
World. Applications will be reviewed using the scoring rubric available at https://justicesquared.org/.
WE in the World will host webinars to provide coaching and technical assistance for applicants to better
understand program components and requirements, team composition and eligibility requirements, and
key dates. Webinars are optional and will be recorded and made available on the application website for
those who are unable to attend. In addition, both drop-in and scheduled office hours will be held to
support teams with their applications. These are optional and are provided as a resource to make sure
that each applicant is supported to complete the application in a way that fully reflects their strengths
and assets, even if they do not have other grant writing support. We would love to see applications from
a diversity of types of healthcare organizations. Submission is defined as all sections completed and
marked finished, the proposal “Submit” button used, and the proposal status showing “Submitted.” If the
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deadline is extended, we will contact all applicants and those who have started a proposal in our online
system.
Late Submissions
Late submissions will not be accepted for any reason. While late submissions will not be accepted, WE
in the World may choose, at their sole discretion, to extend the submission deadline for all applicants.
Such extensions will be granted only in the event of: (1) a verified issue with the submission system that
prevented the completion and submission of proposals, or (2) a disaster, emergency, or significant
internet outage that affects one or more regions. For purposes of this policy, a region is generally
considered to be one or more states. Submission is defined as all sections completed and marked
finished, the proposal “Submit” button used, and the proposal status showing “Submitted.” If the deadline
is extended, we will contact all applicants and those who have started a proposal in our online system.
For more information about this Call for Proposals, contact j2@weintheworld.org.
KEY DATES
Call for Proposals released October 24, 2024
Application portal opens October 29, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. ET
Optional webinars and office hours October 29, 2024 to January 14, 2025
Team co-lead registration (highly recommended) December 15, 2024
Applications for Phase I due January 15, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. ET
Finalists for Phase I announced February 19, 2025
BEACON for Justice assessment sent to teams February 20, 2025
Webinars and office hours held to support finalists to Feb 20, 2025 to April 1, 2025
prepare budgets and conduct BEACON assessments
Interviews held with finalist teams March 3, 2025 to March 31, 2025
Applications for Phase 2 due April 2, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. ET
JUSTICE SQUARED teams announced April 16, 2025
First Justice and Equity Leadership Academy (JELA) held June 16 to June 18, 2025
For full timeline, including full schedule of office hours, please visit https://justicesquared.org/.
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About WE in the World
WE in the World advances a just and abundant world by growing a movement of
better ancestors. Together, we are building the social and vital conditions we all need to thrive, over
generations, on a foundation of racial and economic justice. We are composed of a diverse group of
well-being and equity architects who bring decades of experience to this work and are connected from
the grassroots to the grasstops—made up of health leaders and community leaders, urban planners and
farmers, community organizers and community development leaders, policymakers and business leaders.
As the National Program Office of JUSTICE SQUARED, WE in the World will lead the program’s design
and implementation, including selection of participating teams.
About RWJF
Support for JUSTICE SQUARED is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a
leading national philanthropy committed to improving health and health equity in the United States. In
partnership with others, we are committed to taking bold leaps to transform health in our lifetime and
paving the way together to a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. To achieve that
vision, we are deepening our focus on dismantling one of the biggest barriers to health in America,
structural racism.
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