Organising Health & Care around Communities: Restructuring the City of Hamilton's Board of Health through Collective Action

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed health inequities like never before; these seismic inequities required equally gigantic responses. In Hamilton, community advocates, academics, and health leaders from Black and other racialized and marginalized communities worked together to restructure the Board of (Public) Health (Just Recovery, 2021). This work was informed by lessons from advocating for and establishing a COVID-19 vaccination walk-in clinic known as Restoration House (Joseph et al, 2023). The presentation explains how community advocates, academics, health leaders, community organizations, and residents of Hamilton worked together, drawing on community advocacy knowledge to restructure the Board of Health. The reason for restructuring the Board of Health stemmed from the fact that the Board was comprised of the Mayor of Hamilton and fifteen City Councillors, all of whom had no experience in public health, community health, or an understanding of social determinants of health. By sharing this four-year process of advocacy, community organizing, and transformational change, it is evident that addressing systemic health inequities requires systemic transformational change.