Movement & Organizing Library

Birthed out of the For Us All campaign, the Movement & Organizing Library is a living collection of research, tools, stories, and frameworks for health professional students and leaders who are organizing for justice, dignity, and care.

Whether you are designing a course, leading a campaign, or just looking for language to name what you are experiencing, this library is here to support you. We encourage you to take what you need and share what you learn.

Learn more about the advocacy pillars. 

  • Pillar

  • Advocacy Skills

  • Audience

The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership

Rosa González, Facilitating Power
2019
  • Advocacy Pillars: Centering Community Power
  • Skills: Network Building, Organizing
  • Audience: Artists, Community Based Organizations, Educators, Government Workers, Researchers, Students/Trainees
Charting a pathway to strengthen and transform our local democracies. Thriving, diverse, equitable communities are possible through deep participation; particularly in areas commonly excluded from democratic voice and power. Stronger local democracies means greater ability to address our toughest challenges and withstand economic, ecological, and social crises.

The Sierra Club Movement Organizing Manual

The Sierra Club
2016
  • Advocacy Pillars: Anti-Racist and Justice-Oriented Health Education, Centering Community Power, Institutional Support for Historically Excluded Groups, Repairing Harm with Community Redress, Workforce Diversification
  • Skills: Network Building, Organizing
  • Audience: Artists, Community Based Organizations, Educators, Government Workers, Researchers, Students/Trainees
This manual is designed to aid your work as an organizer: building campaigns that enlist grassroots power to achieve outcomes that improve the world. Our objective is to lay out key ideas and practices that, in our experience, result in campaigns that succeed.

The REPAIR Project: A Prospectus for Change Toward Racial Justice in Medical Education and Health Sciences Research: Repair Project Steering Committee

REPAIR Project Steering Committee
2022
  • Advocacy Pillars: Anti-Racist and Justice-Oriented Health Education, Repairing Harm with Community Redress
  • Skills: Curriculum Development, Leadership Development, Organizing
  • Audience: Community Based Organizations, Educators, Students/Trainees
In this article, the authors describe the REPAIR Project, preliminary outcomes from its first year, and potential future lines of inquiry for medical educators and health sciences researchers. The authors argue that the full damage from slavery and its legacies cannot be undone, but everyone can work in new ways that reduce or eliminate harm.

The Relationship Between Pathway Programs and Student Pursuit of Physical Therapy Careers

Adrienne Pinckney
2025
  • Advocacy Pillars: Workforce Diversification
  • Skills: Leadership Development
  • Audience: Community Based Organizations, Educators, Students/Trainees
Limited diversity among physical therapists throughout the United States warrants exploration of avenues to enhance representation across the profession and, ultimately, improve population health. Pathway programs are arguably a means of supporting and recruiting underrepresented minority (URM) students into the physical therapist profession. The purpose of this investigation was to explore whether meaningful relationships exist between URM status, pathway program participation, and student pursuit of careers as licensed physical therapists.

The Practices of Transformative Movement Building

Movement Strategy Center
2016
  • Advocacy Pillars: Centering Community Power
  • Skills: Network Building, Organizing
  • Audience: Community Based Organizations, Educators, Students/Trainees
MSC defines the core four elements of Transformative Movement Building: leading with audacious vision; deeply embodiment of values; building radical and deep community; and using those pieces (vision, embodiment, and connection) to strategically navigate toward the future.

The Past, Present, and Futurist Role of the Pharmacy Profession to Achieve Black Health Equity

Nicole Avant, Holly McGee
2021
  • Advocacy Pillars: Anti-Racist and Justice-Oriented Health Education, Workforce Diversification
  • Skills: Leadership Development
  • Audience: Community Based Organizations, Educators, Researchers, Students/Trainees
The purpose of this commentary is to summarize missing key elements of current pharmacy education regarding racial health inequities. Specifically, this submission discusses what is jeopardizing Black health, the need to move beyond cultural competency, myths of Black bodies and history of violence by White clinicians, and curricular enhancements to better equip the pharmacy profession with dismantling anti-Black racism and the subsequent Black health inequities.

The Militarization of Johns Hopkins Exposes a Nationwide Trend

Corey Payne, Steph Saxton
2019
  • Advocacy Pillars: Centering Community Power, Institutional Support for Historically Excluded Groups
  • Skills: Network Building, Organizing
  • Audience: Educators, Students/Trainees
This op-ed shares the story of Johns Hopkins students who have been organizing against the university’s new armed private police force and its contracts with ICE.

The Future LGBT Health Professional: Perspectives On Career and Personal Mentorship

Nelson Sánchez, Edward Callahan, Cheryl Brewster, Norma Poll-Hunter, John Paul Sánchez
2018
  • Advocacy Pillars: Anti-Racist and Justice-Oriented Health Education, Institutional Support for Historically Excluded Groups, Workforce Diversification
  • Skills: Leadership Development
  • Audience: Community Based Organizations, Educators, Researchers, Students/Trainees
Mentorship is a critical factor contributing to career success. There is limited research on the quality of mentoring relationships for LGBT health professionals. This study explores facilitators of, obstacles to, and strategies for successful mentorship for LGBT health professional trainees.

The Five Dimensions Guide

2023
  • Advocacy Pillars: Centering Community Power, Repairing Harm with Community Redress
  • Skills: Network Building, Organizing, Policy Advocacy
  • Audience: Community Based Organizations, Government Workers, Researchers, Students/Trainees
A comprehensive guide for public health and social movements to build powerful partnerships.

The Fall and Rise of Mid-Century Student Health Activism: Political Repression, Mccarthyism, and the Association of Internes and Medical Students (1947–1953)

Merlin Chowkwanyun
2019
  • Advocacy Pillars: Anti-Racist and Justice-Oriented Health Education
  • Skills: Curriculum Development, Network Building, Organizing, Policy Advocacy
  • Audience: Educators, Students/Trainees
Common narratives about the mid-century American medical profession’s stunning rise forget a key element: political repression. During the 1940s and 1950s, the American Medical Association (AMA) and its allies sought to eliminate those who questioned American medicine’s status quo, in particular opposition to national health insurance (NHI) and condoning of racism within its ranks. One casualty was the Association for Internes and Medical Students (AIMS), which into the 1940s, was the most prominent vehicle for medical student and trainee political organizing in the United Status. This article tells the story of its rapid demise in the era of McCarthyism at the hands of an AMA campaign to besmirch AIMS’s name, and in the process, destroy it.

Champion Spotlight

The Social Mission Alliance features Social Mission Champions on our social media accounts and blog. The series highlights the important work done by those who are advancing health equity and addressing the health disparities of the society in which it exists. If you’d like to be considered for a Social Mission Champion feature, complete the form below.