(LOB= Legislative Office Building)
Election season is over. The CT General Assembly will have mostly new leadership: Representative Ritter is the next House speaker, Rep. Rojas is the incoming majority leader, Sen. Kelley and Rep. Candelora will serve as minority leaders. Sen. Looney remains the Senate majority leader. The 2021 legislative session begins in January.

High voter turnout across Connecticut and the country demonstrated a fierce determination to be heard.  Thank you, Connecticut health equity voters, for your commitment to making health equity and health care a factor in this election! Follow HES on social media for information about what we are doing to make health equity a priority in Connecticut.

• To inform our 2021 legislative agenda, Health Equity Solutions conducted 8 listening sessions across Connecticut, with a total of 92 participants from 37 towns/cities. Priorities participants identified are summarized here and will inform our 2021 policy agenda.
   
• In late March, Health Equity Solutions launched a community assessment survey to center the voices of the community, particularly people of color, in the state’s pandemic response. Thank you to all who participated! This work was made possible through support from the William Casper Graustein Memorial Fund and the support of our partners at Ledge Light Health District, who helped us successfully translate the survey into Spanish and Haitian Creole. A summary of the results is online or read coverage of the results here.

This month, we discussed the second half of Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell begins and ends the book with accounts of Sandra Bland, a young Black woman who was pulled over for a minor traffic violation and died by suicide in a jail cell. Gladwell weaves a recurring theme of humans using visual cues to ascertain how strangers, people we don’t know, think and feel in any given situation. Each example reflects just how bad we are at accurately reading visual cues. Additionally, through historical accounts, he provides evidence for “coupling”— a theory that our attempts to determine someone’s motives for engaging in crime, sex work, suicide, or sexual assault depend on circumstance. In the end, Gladwell posits that coupling and assessment of visual cues lead us to blame the stranger when encounters don’t go well. The officer whose interactions with Sandra Bland escalated into her arrest and death, blamed Sandra Bland.  Working towards equity requires that we confront our assumptions and assessments so that we can confront and dismantle the racism that permeates our systems and ways of being. We are grateful to have you by our side in this pursuit of equity and justice.