[Piano begins playing] [Dr. Lisa A. Cooper] I'm Dr. Lisa Cooper. I am a mother, wife, daughter; I am a physician and a public health researcher. I'm passionate about advancing social justice and health and healthcare. [Piano music fades] This is an excerpt from my book, "Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?" “Although health equity may sound the same as health equality, in fact these terms imply different outcomes… Equality aims to promote fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same things. Equity means that everyone is given what they need to be successful, even if those opportunities come in different forms and are used in different ways.” I began writing my book in the first half of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, illuminating generations-deep health disparities among communities worldwide. In Baltimore, you’re never far from the water. The mouth of the Patapsco River forms its harbor, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay, and the Bay flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Pleasure boats as well as ships of industry and defense are regular features of the Inner Harbor. But when I look out across it, my thoughts often turn to the shocking and unreconciled horrors of slavery, as these waterways transported ship after ship of the enslaved to this shore. This injustice is part of Baltimore’s (and the entire United States’) identity. Some of my ancestors were chained inside those ships, facing known and unknown horrors. I’m descended from the rural West African Gola tribe, as well as from freed slaves and free Blacks. In 1829, with the aid of President James Monroe, Francis Scott Key, and other members of the American Colonization Society, they sailed across the Atlantic from Virginia aboard the USS Harriett bound for the new colony of Liberia—my birthplace and homeland. We’re all formed by our environments, experiences, and opportunities. In my case, those influences are rooted in my childhood in Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia. Even as a child, I could see how opportunity and privilege—or the lack of them—shape each person’s trajectory. It felt unfair that I had been blessed with safety and security while those around me suffered from poverty and poor health: malaria, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, and more. The disparities were all around me; they were impossible to overlook. Those children, and that awareness, have never left me. They helped to form the foundation of who I’ve become, and inform the research and interventions to which I dedicate my life. It was a wonderful life, until April 12, 1980. Until then, a small group of descendants of slaves and free Blacks in Liberia, held power and controlled the government. But on that April day, the government was overthrown in a bloody coup. Soldiers went from house to house terrorizing people, especially those who were considered to be the privileged class of Liberians, like my family. Fortunately, my family survived that first explosion of violence; my parents acted quickly, allowing us to leave for the United States in 1980. Alone at seventeen, just weeks after the coup, with my most valuable belongings sewn into my clothes for safekeeping, I traveled to the United States to enroll at Emory College in Atlanta. After graduation, I went on to the University of North Carolina for medical school, and then completed my internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. I became part of the network of health care professionals, learning, patient by patient, of the myriad circumstances and decisions, from personal choices to policies, that create disparities. And I saw where health care was failing. During my residency, I realized that the conditions in which many people were living in Baltimore paralleled what I’d witnessed on the streets of Liberia. People faced similar financial struggles, neighborhood safety issues, and reduced job opportunities. Many had to choose between paying for food, their children’s educational needs, or their medication. Many had health problems that persisted from generation to generation. Just as I’d been inspired as a child to help the children struggling on the streets of Liberia, I now felt inspired to help people from underserved communities with whom I interacted on a daily basis in Baltimore. I first met LaToya Ruby Frazier in 2015 when I was invited to The Contemporary Art Museum in Baltimore to have a public discussion with her about how art, science, medicine, technology, and politics might address environmental racism and inequities in health and health care. During our conversation, I mentioned that her series, "The Notion Of Family" (2001–14), echoed a visual research methodology called photovoice in which cameras are given to participants, often people from communities who have experienced oppression, to allow them to document, reflect upon, and communicate about their concerns in order to bring about positive social change. Three years later at a MacArthur Foundation Fellows Forum in Chicago, we began thinking about what we could achieve together around social justice and health inequities. Knowing of LaToya’s interest in using her work to highlight the lives of people in the working class, I encouraged her to feature community health workers. Soon after, LaToya began chronicling CHWs (community health workers) from across Baltimore through photographs and in-depth interviews. These are the frontline heroes who you are experiencing in this monument. Her portraits and the first-person testimonies drawn from the interviews reveal how the backgrounds and experiences of each of these vital contributors uniquely aid those in need. Also included are photographs and short texts by other anonymous CHWs who used a methodology called photovoice. These images and descriptions come from the Center for Health Equity research team, led by Dr. Chidinma Ibe, in collaboration with the Maryland Association of Community Health Workers, who conducted The ALEC (Amplifying the Lived Experiences of Community Health Workers) Study.