Targeted Universalism Bibliography

PUBLICATION BY WENDY AKE | UPDATED: OCTOBER 12, 2023

The framework of targeted universalism has been a compelling framework for work in many different contexts. The sources referenced in this bibliography reflect this diversity of uses and application areas. Targeted universalism is a framework that focuses on policy and program design. The resources are almost all applied research and examples of implementation reflecting the principal focus of targeted universalism.

The first section lists primary resources. These are resources written by key figures developing the framework as defined by the Othering & Belonging Institute–most notably john a. powell. This section includes his 2009 foundational text detailing the concept consistent with current writing at the Institute. The following sections include publications that have drawn on the framework in some way. This reflects a diverse sample of different shades of application and conceptions of targeted universalism. It both provides instruction on the framework and how the framework contributes to efforts to expand the realization of equity and social justice.

This reflects a review of publication databases and other searches. The resources will be updated on an ongoing basis. We welcome submission of additional resources for consideration to include; please contact wendy_ake@berkeley.edu with responses.

Primary Sources

Journals, articles, and essays

Ake, Wendy and Tracy Lam-Hine. 10 December 2020. "Implementing Targeted Universalism: Case Study: King County, WA." Othering & Belonging Institute.
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/implementing-targeted-universalism.

This case study details the ways King County, Washington uses TU within the County’s Racial Equity Strategic Plan.

Flynn, Andrea, Susan Holmberg, Dorian Warren, and Felicia Wong. 2016. "Rewrite the Racial Rules: Building an inclusive American economy." Roosevelt Institute, https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/RI-RRT-Race-201606.pdf.

"We examine the racial rules across six different dimensions: income, wealth, education, criminal justice, health, and democratic participation. We illustrate the evolution of those rules through three distinct historic periods: the pre–civil rights eras of slavery and Jim Crow, the civil rights era, and post–civil rights through the present. For each of these we tease out causal mechanisms and mediating pathways that link rules to unequal outcomes and illustrate how the rules have compounding and cyclical effects.

Ultimately, we show why the rules structuring our economy matter for the well-being of black Americans. And, against the backdrop of stark racial economic inequality dating back centuries, we make the case for pushing past both explicit and implicit exclusions, as well as ostensible race-neutrality. We conclude that promoting an agenda of positive rules and targeted universalism is a feasible—perhaps the only feasible—way to promote greater overall economic health and greater racial inclusion."

Natividad, Ivan and Wendy Ake. 2021. "How can local governments achieve equity in their communities?" Berkeley News, February 8, 2021. https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/02/08/how-can-local-governments-achieve-equity-in-their-communities/

powell, john a. 2012. Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

powell, john a. 2013. "Deepening our understanding of structural marginalization." Poverty and Race 22, no. 5 (September/October): p3-13.

powell, john a. 2012. "Poverty and race through a belongingness lens." Northwest Area Foundation, Policy Matters 1, no. 5 (April). https://www.coloradotrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Poverty_and_Race_through_a_Belonging_Lens-1.pdf.

powell, john a. 2017. "Post-racialism or Targeted Universalism?" Denver University Law Review 86: 785. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/denlr86&div=35&id=&page=.

powell, john a. 2022. "Equity 2.0: What is Targeted Universalism and How Does It Address Inequality?" Nonprofit Quarterly, 08 June 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/equity-2-0-what-is-targeted-universalism-and-how-does-it-address-inequality/.

powell, john a. and Eloy Toppin, Jr.. 2021. "Health equity and the circle of human concern." Medicine and Society, 23, no. 1: E166-174. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/health-equity-and-circle-human-concern/2021-02.

“Using the inequality exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic as a vivid example, this article focuses on health equity from the standpoint of structural marginalization—here, described as being marked as an “other” outside of the circle of human concern. This process leads to tension between the principles of liberty and equality and contributes to the creation of systemic disadvantage as manifested in health disparities. Creating an equitable health system must begin with this root understanding and generate greater belonging through the policy process of targeted universalism. Targeted universalism replaces a disparities framework with one in which a universal goal is identified but targeted strategies to meet each population group’s needs are employed.”

powell, john a., Christy Rogers, and Jason Reece. March 2010. "Targeted Universalism and the Jobs Bill: Helping Communities in Crisis Through Targeted Investments." The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity. Commissioned by the Congressional Black Caucus.

powell, john a. & Ned Conner. 2023. "Form and Substance: Understanding conceptual and design differences among racial equity proposals and a bold application." Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 38, no. 1: 13-58. https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2023-02/2.%20powell%20%26%20Conner.pdf.

"The demand for racial equity has acquired greater intensity and urgency in recent years. Advocacy groups are demanding policies designed to address racial inequality in housing, the criminal justice system, and health care systems, among other arenas. These proposals differ in critical ways that are both substantive or form-based. In some cases, proposals argue for race-specific or race-targeted interventions; in others, they call for universalistic or economic/class-based interventions. Many of the proposals being floated or attempted are new programs or initiatives, while others are better understood as reforms or adjustments to existing programs. At the same time, many demands relate not to specific policy changes or new programs or policies, but are rather process based interventions, such as directives to collective data, establishing benchmarks, and evaluating progress; or stakeholder processes designed to widen potential sources of input for institutions and among administrative officials. While taking stock of the shape and form of various racial equity proposals, this article argues for the need to ground such interventions in a clearer and more nuanced understanding of the goal and definition of racial equity and to evaluate proposals based on goals. Many of the differences in form can be traced to a lack of clarity in goals or objectives, with the implications for each in terms of public support, implementation challenges, and more. The paper ends with a bold new application to promote racial equity by suggesting a new design that would empower people, increasing participation and removing domination. The application would be open to general use and could have special importance for racial equity and belonging. As a new design, we call for experimentation that limits harm."

powell, john a., Stephen Menendian, and Jason Reece. 2009. "The Importance of Targeted Universalism." Poverty & Race 18, no. 2 (March/April). http://www.prrac.org/pdf/MarApr2009PRRACstim.pdf.

"Universal and targeted approaches are false choices. There is a third possibility. An alternative to either a straight universal program or a solely particularistic program is to pursue what we call “targeted universalism.” This is an approach that supports the needs of the particular while reminding us that we are all part of the same social fabric. Targeted universalism rejects a blanket universal which is likely to be indifferent to the reality that different groups are situated differently relative to the institutions and resources of society. It also rejects the claim of formal equality that would treat all people the same as a way of denying difference."

powell, john a., Stephen Menendian, and Wendy Ake. 2019. "Targeted Universalism: Policy and Practice." Othering & Belonging Institute.
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/targeted_universalism_primer.pdf.

powell, john a. and Wendy Ake. 2017. “Creating Structural Changes: The role of targeted universalism.” In The Hidden Rules of Race, edited by Andrea Flynn, Dorian T. Warren, Felicia Wong, and Susan R. Holmberg, 52-62. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://inside.ccsi.org/CCSIPortal/media/content/PDFs/hidden-rules-of-race.pdf.

Reece, Jason, Christy Rogers, Matthew Martin, and Stephen Menendian. "ARRA & the Economic Crisis – One Year Later: Has Stimulus Helped Communities in Crisis." The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity." Commissioned and released by the Fair Recovery Coalition. February 2010. https://www.reimaginerpe.org/files/arraequityoneyearanniv_kirwan_institute_feb2010.pdf.

"Facing an escalating economic crisis, newly inaugurated President Obama signed the historic American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (commonly referred to as “the stimulus”) on February 17th 2009.1 The $787 billion stimulus bill was designed to create and preserve jobs, spur economic growth, and be administered with a particular focus on transparency and accountability. The stimulus bill made explicit reference to “assist those most impacted” by the recession. Has ARRA provided relief to our hardest‐hit communities? Has ARRA worked to promote greater racial and socioeconomic equity in our nation? One year into the implementation of ARRA we find mixed results, and offer critical lessons learned from the ARRA experience. In addition, we provide specific recommendations for achieving the goals of the Recovery Act, generating jobs and broadening prosperity, and reducing our racial and economic divide."

Public interviews, talks, and videos

Abizeid, Marc. 2019. Interview with john a. powell. Who Belongs? for the Othering & Belonging Institute. Podcast audio, 34:27. 8 May 2019. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/podcast-targeted-universalism-john-powell.

This podcast recorded upon the release of the publication "Targeted Universalism: Policy and Practice" discusses the general framework of TU including Professor powell’s reflections on each part of TU. The relationship between TU and equity is discussed as well as some conversation regarding examples of TU.

Johnson, Rob. 2021. Interview with john a. powell. Economics & Beyond for the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Podcast audio, 1:05:00. 25 January 2021. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/podcasts/john-powell-the-pandemic-is-a-missed-opportunity-to-address-racial-disparities.

Othering & Belonging Institute. 2017. "Targeted Universalism." Explainer video, 3:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgGcftWpwUQ&t.

powell, john a. 2011. "Universal Programs and Their Impact." Filmed 11 May 2011 at the California Endowment. Video, 4:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTCkYRo8ViQ.

In this presentation, john a. powell discusses targeted universalism, structural racialization and implicit bias.

powell, john a. 2012. "Leading Toward Equity: Targeted Universalism." Filmed August 2012 at the Oakland Unified School District, CA. Video, 40:50. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpC7kirYDGQ.

powell, john a. 2019. "Targeted Universalism." Filmed 12 April 2019 at the North Central Washington Accountable Community of Health Annual Summit, Moses Lake, WA. Video, 39:06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ8hDFaEJ1g.

powell, john a., Jeff Raikes, and Jenn Hoos Rothberg. 2021. "Targeted universalism and bridging." Filmed 9 November 2021 at the Social Impact Exchange, Exchange 2021: The Systems Summit. Panel conversation, 1:04:23. https://socialimpactexchange.org/exchange2021-plenaries-targeted-universalism/

"A conversation about Targeted Universalism with john powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute, Jeff Raikes, Co-Founder the Raikes Foundation and Jenn Hoos Rothberg, Executive Director, Einhorn Collaborative. Targeted Universalism is a rapidly growing model for achieving equity that assumes that we need to shift mindsets to address systemic inequities, that all of us equally belong to our society, and that we all deserve to thrive. The path to belonging is bridging, which, according to powell, “requires that we create space to hear and see each other” In this conversation, powell, Raikes, and Rothberg discuss Targeted Universalism and the concept of bridging, how they have practiced it both professionally and personally, and the opportunities and challenges they have encountered."

Popular Media

Bynum, Bill and Ed Sivak. 2022. "Achieving Universal Banking: Lessons from the Delta", Nonprofit Quarterly, 2 February 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/achieving-universal-banking-lessons-from-the-delta/.

Cornelius, Chrystel and Krystal Langholz. 2022."‘No One Is Coming to Save Us: Forging paths to native financial sovereignty," Nonprofit Quarterly, 9 February 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/no-one-is-coming-to-save-us-forging-paths-to-native-financial-sovereignty/.

Cunningham, Gary. 2022. "Closing the Racial Wealth Divide—A Call for Strategic Thinking," Nonprofit Quarterly, 12 Jan 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/beyond-equity-targeted-universalism-and-the-closing-of-the-racial-wealth-gap/.

Golden-Vazquez, Abigail. "Achieving Equity Amid Difference: The promise of targeted universalism," Nonprofit Quarterly, 26 January 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/achieving-equity-amid-difference-the-promise-of-targeted-universalism/.

Mazyck, Bernie. 2022. "Beyond Normal: Reimagining an America with truly universal prosperity," Nonprofit Quarterly, 2 March 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/beyond-normal-reimagining-an-america-with-truly-universal-prosperity/.

Osta, Kathleen. 2020. "Targeted Universalism: Our Path Forward." National Equity Project, 16 November 2020. https://medium.com/national-equity-project/targeted-universalism-our-path-forward-3dffc921d198.

powell, john a. 2020. "Opinion: Coronavirus is not the ‘great equalizer’ many say it is," Mercury News, 16 April 2020. https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1202384?ln=en; https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/16/opinion-coronavirus-is-not-the-great-equalizer-many-say-it-is/.

powell, john a. and Maya Rockeymoore. 2014. "Obama’s Plan to Aid Black Men and Boys Will Be a Boon to Other Groups, Too." The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 8 July 2014. https://www.philanthropy.com/article/obamas-plan-to-aid-black-men-and-boys-will-be-a-boon-to-other-groups-too/.

powell, john a. 2022. "Beyond Equity: Targeted universalism and the closing of the racial wealth gap," Nonprofit Quarterly, 19 Jan 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/beyond-equity-targeted-universalism-and-the-closing-of-the-racial-wealth-gap/.

Terry, Cynthia and Ines Polonius. 2022. "Wealth Building for Business Owners of Color: A whole-person approach," Nonprofit Quarterly, 16 February 2022. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/wealth-building-for-business-owners-of-color-a-whole-person-approach/.

Proportionate Universalism, Targeting Within Universalism

Bedayn, Jesse. 2022. "Targeted universalism: A solution for inequality?" CBS8, 03 February 2022. https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/california/targeted-universalism/509-2127090b-7f50-4a91-91e7-04c47acf3309.

“Racial inequalities that have worsened in California during the pandemic. A new, more involved policy approach offers promise even as it remains untested. Sara Kimberlin, senior policy analyst at the California Budget & Policy Center, finds targeted universalism compelling. She said it’s helpful for thinking about how to address a common goal by looking at individual circumstances, ‘so you’re actually moving everyone toward the same goal.’”

Stephen Menendian is interviewed and each piece of TU is reviewed. Attention is drawn to the TU Primer.

Bagenstos, Samuel R. 2014. "Universalism and Civil Rights (with Notes on Voting Rights after Shelby)." The Yale Law Journal 123: 2838-76. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/2838.Bagenstos.2876_c5kmzww2.pdf.

"After the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, voting rights activists proposed a variety of legislative responses. Some proposals sought to move beyond measures that targeted voting discrimination based on race or ethnicity. They instead sought to eliminate certain problematic practices that place too great a burden on voting generally. Responses like these are universalist, because rather than seeking to protect any particular group against discrimination, they formally provide uniform protections to everyone. As Bruce Ackerman shows, voting rights activists confronted a similar set of questions—and at least some of them opted for a universalist approach—during the campaign to eliminate the poll tax. Universalist responses have many possible strengths: tactically, in securing political support for and broader judicial implementation of laws that promote civil rights interests; substantively, in aggressively attacking the structures that lead to inequality; and expressively, in emphasizing human commonality across groups. But they have possible drawbacks along all three of these dimensions as well. Although scholars have addressed some of these strengths and drawbacks in the context of specific proposals for civil rights universalism, no work has attempted to examine these issues comprehensively. This essay attempts such an examination."

Dodge, Kenneth A. and W. Benjamin Goodman. 2019 "Universal Reach at Birth: Family Connects," Future of Children 29, no. 1 (Spring): 41-60. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1220080.pdf.

"How do we screen all families in a population at a single time point, identify family-specific risks, and connect each family with evidence-based community resources that can help them overcome those risks—an approach known as targeted universalism? In this article, Kenneth A. Dodge and W. Benjamin Goodman describe Family Connects, a program designed to do exactly that.

Developed and tested in Durham, NC, Family Connects—now in place at 16 sites in the United States—aims to reach every family giving birth in a given community. The program rests on three pillars. The first is home visiting: trained nurses (or other program representatives) welcome new babies into the community, typically at the birthing hospital, then work with the parents to set up one or more home visits when the baby is about three weeks old so they can identify needs and connect the family with community resources. The second pillar, community alignment, is an assembly of all community resources available to families at birth, including child care agencies, mental health providers, government social services, and long-term programs for subgroups of families with identified needs, such as Healthy Families and Early Head Start. The third pillar, data and monitoring, is an electronic data system that acts as a family-specific psychosocial and educational record (much like an electronic health record) to document nurses’ assessments of mother and infant, as well as connections with community agencies.

In randomized clinical trials, Family Connects has shown promising results. Compared to control group families, families randomly assigned to the program made more connections to community resources. They also reported more positive parenting behaviors and fewer serious injuries or illnesses among their infants, among other desirable outcomes. And in the first five years of life, Family Connects children were significantly less likely to be subject to Child Protective Services investigations than were children in a control group."

Francis-Oliviero, Florence et al. 2020. "Theoretical and practical challenges of proportionate universalism: A review." Rev. Panam Salud Publica 44: 110 https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2020.110.

"In 2010, the principle of proportionate universalism (PU) has been proposed as a solution to reduce health inequalities. It had a great resonance but does not seem to have been widely applied and no guidelines exist on how to implement it. The two specific objectives of this scoping review were: (1) to describe the theoretical context in which PU was established, (2) to describe how researchers apply PU and related methodological issues. We searched for all articles published until 6th of February 2020, mentioning “Proportionate Universalism” or its synonyms “Targeted universalism” OR “Progressive Universalism” as a topic in all Web of Science databases."

Fuentes-Rohwer, Luis, and Guy-Uriel Charles. 2021. "Pathological racism, chronic racism, and targeted universalism." California Law Review 109, no. 3: 1107. https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3997&context=facpub.

"Race and law scholars almost uniformly prefer antisubordination to anticlassification as the best way to understand and adjudicate racism. In this short Essay, we explore whether the antisubordination framework is sufficiently capacious to meet our present demands for racial justice. We argue that the antisubordination approach relies on a particular conception of racism, which we call pathological racism, that limits its capacity for addressing the fundamental restructuring that racial justice requires. We suggest, in a manner that might be viewed as counterintuitive, that targeted universalist remedies might be more effective to address long term racial inequality but might also be the more radical approach to addressing racial discrimination."

Kabeer, Naila. 2014. "The politics and practicalities of universalism: towards a citizen-centred perspective on social protection." European Journal of Development Research 26, no. 3: 338-354. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/53578/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Kabeer%2C%20N_Kabeer_politics_practicalities_universalism_2014_Kabeer_politics_practicalities_universalism_2014.pdf.

"The long-standing divide between universal and residual approaches in the field of social policy is also evident in the emerging agenda around social protection. Underpinning this divide are contrasting worldviews. Arguments in favour of residual approaches are frequently couched in a market-centred discourse which stresses efficiency, incentives and a cost-benefit calculus while those advocating universalism favour a state-centred discourse and normative arguments. This article attempts to bridge the divide by offering a pragmatic argument for incremental universalism which stresses the responsibilities as well as rights associated with citizenship and suggest the need to factor in wider economic and social externalities in estimating both costs and benefits."

Jacques, Olivier and Noël, Alain. 2021. "Targeting within universalism." Journal of European Social Policy 31, no. 1 (February): 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928720918973.

"The idea of targeting within universalism has been evoked frequently, usually as a best of both worlds’ strategy. The approach remains difficult to identify, however, because targeting is usually measured as the opposite of universalism. This article proposes to consider targeting and universalism as two distinct dimensions of the welfare state, the opposite of universalism being more usefully understood as residualism, and not as pro-poor targeting. Four welfare state possibilities then emerge, combining a position on the universalism/residualism axis and one on the pro-poor/pro-rich axis: universalism (France, for instance), targeting within universalism (Denmark), targeting within residualism (the United States) and pro-rich residualism (Japan). We show that targeting within universalism entails pro-poor targeting without means testing, a combination that can be achieved with limits on the earnings-relatedness of the pension system and generous transfers to the working age population. Thus understood, targeting within universalism proves to be an effective redistributive strategy, better to redistribute than mere targeting, and less costly than universalism pure and simple."

powell, john a., Stephen Menendian, and Jason Reece. 2009. "The Importance of Targeted Universalism." Poverty & Race 18, no. 2 (March/April). http://www.prrac.org/pdf/MarApr2009PRRACstim.pdf.

"Targeting within universalism means identifying a problem, particularly one suffered by marginalized people, proposing a solution, and then broadening its scope to cover as many people as possible. It sees marginalized populations in American society as the canary in the coal mine, to borrow a metaphor developed by Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres. It recognizes that problems faced by particular segments of American society are problems that could spill over into the lives of everyone, just as the Lower Ninth Ward was not the only part of New Orleans to suffer in the wake of Katrina. Likewise, the subprime credit crisis did not end in poor, urban communities, but has spread far beyond and has been felt throughout the global economy.

Targeting within universalism means being proactive and goal-oriented about achievable outcomes. As an initial step, an Opportunity Impact Statement (see accompanying article, p. 13) could be employed to gauge how a universal policy would impact particular groups. But an impact assessment alone, although a move in the right direction, is not enough. At times, the impact will not be predictable. In a complex real-world setting, policies have unintended consequences and resistance that thwart policy intentions. It is critical that targeted universal policies set clear goals and use mechanisms to closely monitor and correct for negative feedback loops and other resistance to achieve those goals."

Schram, Sanford F. 2022. "The Biden Racial Justice Policy Agenda: Combating systemic racism with targeted within universalism." International Review of Public Policy 4, no. 1 (March): 123-128. https://journals.openedition.org/irpp/2408.

"Biden himself has been keen to recognize that opposition to Trump’s racism, in particular, has proven critical to his own political success and, as President, he has moved to populate his cabinet with people of color and to propose a series of policy proposals designed to address what Biden and others call “systemic racism”. Leaning on the more progressive activists in his Party, Biden – while having a history as a centrist – has thrown the weight of his Presidency behind the push for racial justice that has intensified in the era of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, especially in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Biden also appreciates that the votes of African Americans helped him to procure the Democratic nomination and, eventually, his presidency. For all these reasons, Biden has a very ambitious racial justice agenda. His definition of “systemic racism” is laid out in his executive pronouncement from his first day as President and refers to discriminatory practices embedded in the operations of society’s basic institutions and everyday organizations, as opposed to merely consciously prejudice by individuals (Biden, 2021). Across a number of policy arenas, Biden hopes now, in a post-Trump presidency, to move the U.S. further down the road toward racial justice. How far he is likely to get in this endeavor is nonetheless very much an open question.

Both as a candidate and as president, Biden has supported a number of policy initiatives to promote racial justice, ranging from addressing systemic racism in policing to reparations for African American farmers. The most noteworthy features in the COVID-19 relief bill that he was able to get through Congress were not race specific, but the assistance offered was targeted in a way that would disproportionately benefit non-whites who are over-represented at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Biden has also appointed a number of prominent non-white cabinet officials to head such agencies as the Department of Health and Human Services and even the Defense Department.

…Although Biden has used the language of systemic racism to align his Administration with the progressive left in the Democratic Party, his main approach is actually more subtle being less about targeting aid to non-whites and more about universalistic policies designed to help those struggling economically. Not surprisingly, this approach disproportionately benefits non-whites who are more likely to be economically disadvantaged compared with Whites overall. Theda Skocpol (1991) has long championed this approach as more likely to be politically popular, especially since it is inclusive and leads to a broader base of support across racial groups. She calls it “targeting within universalism”. A prime example of Biden’s strategy of targeting within universalism is in the “infrastructure” strategy he has proposed (White House, 2021). Biden’s definition of infrastructure goes well beyond roads and bridges, or even mass transit, to include a wide variety of expenditures related to such diverse things as modernizing waste water systems, improving the plumbing for public water supplies, extending high-speed broadband internet access to all Americans, universalizing child care, and radically increasing the benefits that families can receive from the childcare allowance in the tax code. The latter would basically cut child poverty in half and disproportionately affect non-whites. The infrastructure proposals have polled extremely well across partisan and racial lines and suggests that targeting within universalism may in fact be the winning approach for Biden’s racial justice agenda."

Skocpol, Theda. 1991. “Targeting Within Universalism: Politically Viable Policies to Combat Poverty in the United States,” In The Urban Underclass, edited by Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, 411-436. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Skocpol, Theda. 1996. “Targeting Within Universalism: Politically viable policies to combat poverty in the United States.” In Social Policy in the United States, 250 - 274. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691214023-010/html?lang=en.

Spies-Butcher, B., Phillips, B., & Henderson, T. 2020. "Between universalism and targeting: Exploring policy pathways for an Australian Basic Income." The Economic and Labour Relations Review 31, no. 4: 502–523. https://doi.org/10.1177/1035304620964272.

"Despite growing interest in proposals for a universal basic income, little advance has been made in implementation. Here we explore policy options for an Australian Basic Income. Our analysis responds to concerns that Basic Income is both too expensive and too radical a departure from existing welfare state structures to be a feasible policy option. Drawing on policy and Basic Income scholarship we identify changes to Australia’s current means-tested benefits structures that move substantially towards Basic Income while remaining consistent with historic policy norms, which we call ‘affluence testing’. Using microsimulation we explore fiscal and distributional trade-offs associated with the implementation of an affluence-tested Basic Income. Our results suggest Basic Income has the potential to significantly reduce inequality and poverty while also requiring taxes to rise substantially. Placing these trade-offs in international context we find the policy would reduce inequality to levels similar to Nordic welfare states while increasing overall taxation to approximately the OECD average."

Stoeffler, S.W. 2017. "Using targeted universalism to increase service access for marginalized populations." Peer-reviewed presentation at The Institute for Social Inclusion Annual Conference. Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA, April 2017.

Business

Nurse, Saran. 2022. "Why ‘race neutral’ policy fails black small business owners: Lessons learned from the paycheck protection program and mapping an equitable path forward." In Sustainability and the Future of Work and Entrepreneurship for the Underserved, edited by Joanna Denise Rolle and Micah Crump. Hershey: IGI Global. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-4322-4.ch006 https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/why-race-neutral-policy-fails-black-small-business-owners/307700.

"Utilizing critical race theory as the analytical lens, this chapter explores how the Paycheck Protection Program, which did not specify preference to race of applicant, nevertheless resulted in racialized outcomes. The chapter examines the program's primary features to understand whether the appearance of race neutrality obscures a White normative standard embedded within the program. The examination reveals that the program's design was more aligned with the White small business owner experience and that policymakers failed to adequately consider the unique needs of Black small business owners in formulating the program. The author argues that the program was therefore more accessible to White small business owners, was more beneficial to them, and helped to perpetuate the White advantage in small business outcomes. The chapter concludes with the recommendation that future small business policies should follow a targeted universalism approach. Suggestions for redesigning the Paycheck Protection Program, or similar small business policy, are provided."

Community organizing and engagement

Dunn, Emma, Summe Lee, and Emma Sjostrom. 2019. "Empowering Youth Voters in Precinct 1-9: Strategies for Increasing Youth Voter Turnout with a Racial Equity Framework." Resilient Communities Project (RCP), University of Minnesota. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/205548.

This project was completed as part of the 2018-2019 Resilient Communities Project (rcp.umn.edu) partnership with Ramsey County. Historically, Ward 1 Precinct 9 in St. Paul, which encompasses the Frogtown Neighborhood, has experienced lower-than-average election turnout when compared to the rest of the state, especially among voters ages 18-24. Ramsey County Project Lead Dave Triplett worked with students in Doug Chapin's PA 8081: Election Administration Capstone Workshop to identify strategies to increase youth voter turnout in this precinct in future elections. The students' final report and presentation are available.

Gupta, Jyoti. 2021. "Resistance, race, and subjectivity in congregation-based community organizing." Journal of Community Psychology 49, no. 8 (November): 3141–3161. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22549.

Ideas of resistance have become common in media and political discourse in contemporary times where there is growing awareness of racial violence and xenophobia. Calls to “resist” and awakenings to public life prompt questions about the kind of citizenship being cultivated, the social meanings individuals reproduce and create through participation in “resistance,” and the changing sense of their positions and agency as they act in the world. Here I examine the citizen-subject that comes into being through “resistance” to racial injustice, drawing on the case of Faith in Action (formerly PICO) and its development of a theological organizing framework, the Theology of Resistance. This study analyzes the discourses and content of two public data sources—The Prophetic Resistance Podcast series and news media about prophetic resistance within the organizing network. These sources offer a means to examine the negotiated nature of political selves that are created through processes that socialize and subjugate as well as through processes wherein subjects produce and sometimes transform social positions. Findings show that centering a racial analytic and prioritizing racial justice outcomes, shifts that were made within FIA, results in the cultivation of a political subject that is reflexive about internal and external subjugating forces, relational as it discards the armor of racial hierarchy and exclusion, and constructive as it creates conditions or contexts for new political subjects through prophetic action. This study contributes to the conceptual development of organizing as a mechanism to generate social change; specifically, it offers the lens of political subjectivity as a meaningful analytic to enrich understandings of this mechanism.

Willis, Wendy. 2020. "Take a seat at Oregon’s kitchen table: Adapting targeted universalism for broad and deep civic engagement." National Civic Review 108, no. 4: 16-26. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.32543/naticivirevi.108.4.0016

In 2011, a group of Oregon civic leaders and national partners got together to discuss their collective hunch that Oregonians needed and wanted more meaningful opportunities to participate in public decision making. In 2012, they founded and launched Oregon’s Kitchen Table, a statewide civic engagement platform, which they housed in the National Policy Consensus Center in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. The idea was to create a permanent piece of civic infrastructure that combined the best thinking in public participation, community organizing, and deliberative democracy with the online capabilities of campaign software and data management.

As former Oregon Attorney General and President of University of Oregon, David Frohnmayer, put it on the day of the launch: “Instead of loud voices or talk radio, this has been designed with a lot of really scientific architecture. The more people participate, the deeper decision makers can probe into the cross sections of what Oregonians think.”

The theory was that, with the combination of online and in-person tools, Oregon’s Kitchen Table could reach white, college-educated audiences with a light—and relatively inexpensive—touch and that we could spend the lion’s share of resources and attention on reaching and building relationships with historically under-represented communities. Over time, our outreach methods became more and more culturally specific and more and more distinct on a community-by-community basis.

Wright, Ursula, Hayling Price, and Ebbie Anidi. 2018. "Getting to yes: How to generate consensus for targeted universalism." FSG. Issue brief. https://www.fsg.org/resource/getting-to-yes.

This issue brief describes how FSG used a set of specific methods to clarify the essential elements of targeted universalism with the community stakeholders of a collective impact initiative focused on education outcomes in Staten Island.

Wright, Ursula, Hayling Price, and Ebele Anidi. 2018. "Creating Consensus with Targeted Universalism." FSG. Blog post, 23 October 2018. https://www.fsg.org/blog/creating-consensus-targeted-universalism/.

A collaborative effort, driven by a diverse group of stakeholders united behind a common goal, can serve as a catalyst for addressing inequities at a systems level. But beneath the unity of purpose, initial disagreement can arise when stakeholders have to decide how to invest in those with the greatest need without sacrificing community-level goals or appearing to favor one group over another.

When we recently faced this challenge within one community-based initiative, we turned to “targeted universalism,” an approach to change management that simultaneously aims for a universal goal while also addressing disparities in opportunities among sub-groups.

COVID

Berry, Lorna, Julia Oreopoulos and Jessica Higgins-Anderson. 2021. "Innovations and adaptations of a national music therapy program during covid lockdowns." Australian Journal of Music Therapy 32, no. 1: [42]-51. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.273209589995304.

Children thrive when their parents have access to the resources they need to provide a nurturing environment, including the knowledge, skills and capacity to develop secure and responsive relationships. Sing and Grow is an Australian, evidence-based music therapy program supporting parents to build these skills, and increase their children's resilience in the face of adversity. COVID restrictions and lockdowns increased community need for this program, as social isolation and other stressors had a significant impact on parental capacity to create nurturing environments. However, challenges arose for both Sing and Grow and families in the necessary pivot from face-to-face services. The national music therapy team responded by adapting not only the way services were delivered, but the way in which they worked together to create content. Three working groups were formed, and an interconnected workflow was developed. Enablers and barriers to families accessing the adapted services, as well as outcomes, were gathered via verbal and written feedback from clients, staff and collaborating organisations. This also provided the opportunity to learn about the emerging needs in the community. By integrating the adaptations into Sing and Grow's regular suite of services, and aligning them within a Targeted Universalism framework, a wider cross-section of the Australian community can benefit from the inclusion of music therapy and music therapy-informed services to improve child outcomes.

Gaynor, Tia Sherèe and Meghan E. Wilson. 2020. "Social vulnerability and equity: The disproportionate impact of COVID-19." Public Administration Review 80, no. 5: 832-838. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13264.

As the architect of racial disparity, racism shapes the vulnerability of communities. Socially vulnerable communities are less resilient in their ability to respond to and recover from natural and human-made disasters compared with resourced communities. This essay argues that racism exposes practices and structures in public administration that, along with the effects of COVID-19, have led to disproportionate infection and death rates of Black people. Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Social Vulnerability Index, the authors analyze the ways Black bodies occupy the most vulnerable communities, making them bear the brunt of COVID-19's impact. The findings suggest that existing disparities exacerbate COVID-19 outcomes for Black people. Targeted universalism is offered as an administrative framework to meet the needs of all people impacted by COVID-19.

Godwin, Katherin. 2023. "Targeted universalism uses social capital to increase equity in COVID-19 recovery." ncIMPACT Initiative, University of North Carolina, https://ncimpact.sog.unc.edu/2022/12/targeted-universalism-social-capital-increases-equity-in-covid-19-recovery/.

Harris, Angela P. and Aysha Pamukcu. 2021. "Fostering the civil rights of health." In COVID-19 Policy Playbook: Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future, edited by Burris, S., et. al. Boston: Public Health Law Watch. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3809477.

In 2020, structural racism in the United States forcefully entered the public consciousness. The disparate impacts of COVID-19 on people of color, coupled with massive protests and organizing against racialized state violence (which themselves were met with racialized state violence), inspired many American policymakers, institutions, and organizations to craft race-aware responses to the pandemic. Race-aware remedies to the harms of COVID-19 are essential and long overdue. Nonetheless, in the context of long-standing and pervasive structural racism, race-aware policies continue to be blocked or challenged. This Chapter uses the “civil rights of health” framework introduced in Volume I to suggest how short-term policymaking on behalf of racialized vulnerable populations must be embedded in longer-term strategies for building an inclusive sense of the common good, starting with an “infrastructure of facts.” This paper was prepared as part of the COVID-19 Policy Playbook: Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future, a comprehensive report published by Public Health Law Watch in partnership with the de Beaumont Foundation and the American Public Health Association.

By practicing targeted universalism, policymakers can aim specific strategies, such as social capital-based programming, at problems that plague marginalized groups to advance equity in COVID-19 economic recovery efforts.

Khan, Safi U., Kobina K. Hagan and Zulqarnain Javed. 2022. "Disproportionate impact of COVID-19 among socially vulnerable patients." Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes 15, no. 8 (August). https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.122.009294.

Disease outbreaks may impose substantial hardships on local health infrastructure and the quality of life of socially vulnerable communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted glaring inequities in disease susceptibility. The Mexican Institute of Social Security data set reported that patients in the lowest income decile had a 5-fold higher probability of experiencing COVID-19–related death than those at the top decile. In the United States, counties with greater social vulnerability—as measured by the social vulnerability index—showed a 2-fold higher risk of becoming COVID-19 hot spots than those with lower vulnerability, especially among rural counties, counties with a higher proportion of racial and ethnic minorities, and inadequate housing units. Additionally, adherence to social distancing and other risk mitigation strategies at the height of the pandemic was lower among socially disadvantaged groups, including Black and Hispanic communities, possibly related to preclusive social and occupational demands.

Louis-Charles, Hans, Lemur Teron, Nakeina E. Douglas-Glenn, and Amidu Kalokoh. 2023. "Unmasking disaster disparities and inequality in local emergency management." In Racial Equity, COVID-19, and Public Policy, edited by Elsie L. Harper-Anderson, Jay S. Albanese, and Susan T. Gooden. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003286967-2/unmasking-disaster-disparities-inequality-local-emergency-management-hans-louis-charles-lemir-teron-nakeina-douglas-glenn-amidu-kalokoh.

The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 across racial and socioeconomic lines in the United States underscores long-standing disaster impact inequities that parallel those following weather-related disasters. Disaster response is primarily a local government responsibility with conditional assistance provided by the state and federal government when local capabilities are overwhelmed. Although much is known about the relationship of social vulnerability to disaster, far less is known about how local governments have used research findings to incorporate social equity considerations within their emergency management plans. This chapter provides historical vignettes of the influence race has had on the field of emergency management, an overview of emergency management and public health coordination during the pandemic, a discussion on COVID-19 fatalities and concurrent social vulnerability factors, and, finally, a document analysis of local governments incorporation of race and social equity considerations within their emergency management plans. Through a purposive sampling method, local governments selected for analysis represent the largest African American, Hispanic, or Native American populated counties within the ten states with the highest COVID-19 death rates. Our findings show that emergency planning documents are not all race elusive, but there is broad variance in application. Additionally, the incorporation of social vulnerability assessments of older adults and those with disabilities has widespread integration but fewer mentions of the challenges faced by renters and low-income residents. Emergency management agencies vary in size and capacity that competitively disadvantage less-resourced communities. Federal policy intervention with a targeted universalism approach has the potential to systematically lift the standards and capacities of local emergency management operations through universal goals and with tailored strategies for minoritized communities that have historically been disenfranchised by the apparatus of local emergency management.

Mate, Kedar S. 2022. "The Curb Cut." American Journal of Medical Quality 37, no. 3: 272-275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1097/JMQ.0000000000000022.

Coronavirus disease 2019 laid bare the gaps in our health systems. Isolation and discoordination of both individuals and systems, inequities at local and global scales, and false choices between our prosperity and our health, all exacerbated the crisis. To build a better “normal” and not just a new one, health care should employ the approach of targeted universalism, which demonstrates that we can often get to universally held societal objectives by using targeted strategies that help provide an advantage to those that have been systematically disadvantaged. The goal is universal, but achieving it requires multiple strategies that target the needs of various groups to help them share in the universal goal. This approach is perhaps most easily understood, and most urgently needed, in the context of improving health equity. Using targeted strategies to permanently remake our health systems will honor the lives of those we lost far too early.

Disability

"The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the cracks and chasms in our social structures. It threw a hard truth into sharp relief: in an emergency response, it is the marginalized members of our community who are most at risk of being left behind. This article aims to contribute to the COVID-19 dialogue series by highlighting the social justice and social equity concerns related to disability justice in an emergency response. Specifically, we examine the case of K-12 school closures in Washington State in response to the COVID-19 public health crisis, for its impact on students with disabilities. We find that the response to COVID-19 emergency guided by utilitarian approaches, led to further marginalization and inequitable impact on special education students and their families. We propose that an alternative approach of Targeted Universalism that involves universal goal-setting and targeted strategy development, when modified to include Restorative and Transformative justice practices, may be a valuable tool to create the conditions for an emergency response that promotes social equity and social justice."

Protonentis, Adana, Rashmi Chordiya and ChrisTiana ObeySumner. 2021. "Centering the margins: Restorative and transformative justice as our path to social equity." Administrative Theory & Praxis 43, no. 3: 333-354, https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2020.1868159.

Early Childhood and Youth

Lærke, Anna. 2012. "‘We’re not poor–the others are’: Talking with children about poverty and social exclusion in Milton Keynes, England." In Learning from the Children: Childhood, culture and identity in a changing world, edited by Jackqueline Waldren and Ignacy-Marke Kaminski. New York City: Berghahn Books. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qcvvt.

Zucker, Sarah, Kimberly Martini-Carvell, and Morgan Reiss. 2022. "Targeted Universalism: Help Me Grow’s approach to advancing equity." Help Me Grow National Center. https://helpmegrownational.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Targeted-Universalism-Help-Me-Grows-Approach-to-Advancing-Equity_HMG-National-Center-2023.pdf.

Education

General

Bedayn, Jesse. 2022. "Targeted universalism: A solution for inequality?" CalMatters, 3 February 2019. https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2022/02/targeted-universalism-racial-inequality/.

Boshara, Ray. 2019. "Education and Wealth’s Catch-22." Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Open Vault Blog, 26 February 2019. https://www.stlouisfed.org/en/open-vault/2019/february/education-wealth-catch-22.

"There are many things we can do to independently increase both wealth and college success. One option would be radically improving early childhood environments, especially early education opportunities, which have meaningful economic impacts later in life, according to many studies.

I'm also big fan of “baby bonds,” also called “child development accounts” and “college savings accounts.” They automatically give children a deposit (typically $100 to $500) at birth or when they enter kindergarten. The deposit is then restricted for post-secondary education.

In some programs and policies now operating in the U.S., every kid gets something, but kids from lower-income and lower-wealth families get more, a structure sometimes called “progressive” or “targeted” universalism.

Americans do not believe in equality of outcomes but we do believe in equality of opportunity. The problem is that inequality of outcomes in one generation becomes inequality of opportunity in the next.

Baby bonds can serve as the inheritance that breaks that vicious cycle and addresses that conundrum—it's the start-up money that, in the spirit of my father, actually makes both education and more money possible."

California Assembly Blue Ribbon Commission on Early Childhood Education. 2019. "Assembly Blue Ribbon Commission Report." April 2019. https://speaker.asmdc.org/sites/speaker.asmdc.org/files/pdf/BRC-Final-Report.pdf.

Javid, Khydeeja Alam, et. al. 2021. "Requesting a $245 Million Investment for the Establishment of the Whole Child Equity Fund in the 2021-22 State Budget for Birth-Eight Aged Children." Letter to Governor Gavin Newsom and others, 24 February 2021, https://childrenspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Whole-Child-Equity-Partnership-Budget-Letter-FINAL.pdf.

Portland Public Schools. 2021. Res. No. 6238, Proclamation and Recognition of February as Black History Month. 9 February 2021. https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/219/2020-2021%20Board%20of%20Education%20Action%20Minutes%20with%20Table%20of%20Contents.pdf.

“In service of the Superintendent’s overarching strategic framework of targeted universalism, shaped from the community-driven vision for PPS, we recognize our commitment to center the realities of Black students, and eliminating the oppression embedded in our systems that they experience.” And the distribution of funds from a bond issuance are described to include the “develop[ing] a culturally-responsive community vision, make targeted investments in facilities in North/Northeast Portland.”

Research

Chatmon, Chris and Richard Gray. 2015. "Lifting up our kings: Developing black males in a positive and safe space." Voices in Urban Education 42: 50-56. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1082780.pdf.

African American males are three times more likely than their White male counterparts to be suspended or expelled in public schools. Changing these odds requires not only addressing disparities in discipline practices, but also lifting up a new narrative of hope, possibility, and brilliance so that young Black men can see and realize their potential. In 2010, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Superintendent Tony Smith, Oakland's Board of Education, the Urban Strategies Council, and the East Bay Community Foundation concluded that past efforts to improve the educational experiences and supports of African American male students in OUSD had changed little for this student population. They determined that real change would require a culture-shifting commitment by the school system. To institutionalize this commitment, OUSD launched the Office of African American Male Achievement (OAAMA), a bold project created to fundamentally improve academic and life outcomes for African American male students in Oakland, making OUSD the first district in the United States to create a department specifically to address the needs of African American male students. OAAMA Director, Chris Chatmon, and his colleagues have courageously and creatively cultivated new forms of interactions, relationships, rituals, and practices between young Black men, educators, parents, unions, district staff, community members, and organizations. Richard Gray, Director of Community Organizing & Engagement at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, sat down with Chris Chatmon to discuss the path and steps he has taken to create and sustain his program. This article focuses on how Chris's program reaches, uplifts, and educates Black males. OAAMA's approach to changing the outcomes for young Black men in OUSD is centered on the belief that every interaction, no matter how small, impacts the culture and the lives of young people. In fact, it is these many small interactions that often matter the most.

Chatmon, Christopher P. and Vajra M. Watson. 2018. "Decolonizing school systems: Racial justice, radical healing, and educational equity inside Oakland Unified School District," Voices in Urban Education 48: 7-12. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1174506.

Educational spaces, like the rest of the nation's current policy arenas, have become a contentious terrain where ideological and political battles are fought and particular futures won. This article is written in the aftermath of the atrocity at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in August 2017, where racism, racial rage, hate, violence, and death took center stage during a white supremacist rally at an institution of higher education. A month later, motions were set into play to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—impacting the legal rights of children of immigrants to attend school. Oakland is also a battlefield. The innovative work of the Office of African American Male Achievement (AAMA) in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is part of a larger legacy to reimagine schooling as powerfully inclusive and unapologetically democratic. In this article, the authors offer a racial justice paradigm for other school systems struggling to move towards educational equity.

Dechaine, Jennifer M., José M. Rios, and Susana Flores. 2022. "Diversifying the STEM teaching workforce: A process and tools described through one institution’s journey." ADVANCE Journal 3, no. 2. https://doi.org/10.5399/osu/ADVJRNL.3.2.7.

University teacher education programs are a key bridge across educational systems that are often overlooked by initiatives aimed at advancing equity in STEM education. STEM teachers at all levels are overwhelmingly white, and STEM subjects are still too often taught using pedagogies that ignore the cultural contexts of minoritized communities. Here, we describe a guiding framework and consultative model developed to help university teacher education programs to identify and modify structures, policies, and practices that create barriers to STEM education and STEM fields for minoritized communities in Washington state. This model is based on the theoretical framework of Targeted Universalism and utilizes landscape analyses, professional development, data analysis, and a series of journey mapping and design clinic exercises to recognize assets and identify barriers for targeted communities. In this paper, we summarize the key characteristics and activities of this model and illustrate its application at Central Washington University.

Dee, Thomas S. and Emily K. Penner. 2021. "My Brother's Keeper? The Impact of Targeted Educational Supports." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 40, no. 4 (Autumn): 1171-1196. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22328.

The My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African American Male Achievement (AAMA) program. The AAMA focuses on regularly scheduled classes exclusively for Black, male students and taught by Black, male teachers who focus on social-emotional training, African-American history, culturally relevant pedagogy, and academic supports. In this study, we present quasi-experimental evidence on the dropout effects of the AAMA by leveraging its staggered scale-up across high schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). We find that AAMA availability led to a significant reduction in the number of Black males who dropped out as well as smaller reductions among Black females, particularly in ninth grade.

Dueker, Gwenden, Jing Chen, Candace Cowling, and Bryana Hopkins. 2014. "Integrating protective factors and targeted universalism to engage diverse families in a community wide child-maltreatment prevention program." Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 927.

his study examines family engagement in a community based child-maltreatment prevention program. Firmly grounded in the idea of targeted universalism (e.g., [p]owell, 2012; Skocpo, 1991) and applying the protective factors framework (e.g., Masten & Garmezy, 1985), this free program uses developmental screenings to identify possible issues early while creating an opportunity to provide parents with child development knowledge and concrete social supports. All county residents with children under age five are offered the opportunity to complete Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) at regular intervals. Parents receive results and newsletters containing developmental information (e.g., age-appropriate activities suggestions) and community resources. If a potential delay is identified, follow-up occurs. Study 1 is a quantitative assessment of relations between demographic factors and level of program engagement. Study 2 is a qualitative analysis of interviews with families showing high participation despite having demographic characteristics associated with low engagement in Study 1. Study 1: Engagement was defined as the number of developmental screenings submitted by a family. Between January 2006-May 2012, 3,177 families submitted at least one ASQ (M=5.5, sd=5.0) and complete demographic information (see Table 1). A negative binomial regression model was estimated to examine the relationship between engagement level and Family (income, size), Child (race, sex), and Maternal (education level, language) demographic factors.

Farmer, Thomas W, et. al. 2022. "The Developmental Dynamics of Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties of Youth of Color: Systemic Oppression, Correlated Constraints, and the Need for Targeted Universalism." Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders 30, no. 2: 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/10634266211068892.

In this introduction to the special series, we examine the emotional and behavioral difficulties of youth of color from a dynamic developmental, ecological systems perspective. Building on the concepts of the child-in-context, correlated constraints, systemic oppression, and the malleability of maladaptive patterns, we argue that current research approaches and intervention frameworks (e.g., Multitiered Systems of Support, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support) are centered on the experiences and circumstances of youth from majority backgrounds. This creates a context in which the emotional and behavioral difficulties of youth of color reflect a continuum of services casualty in which routine daily supports, interventions, and services are not aligned with their developmental needs and their corresponding pathways to success. There is a need to establish a targeted-universalism approach in which interventions and supports are centered on the daily functioning and adaptation of underrepresented groups. We discuss how a tiered system of adaptive supports may be designed and implemented to address this need.

Farmer, Thomas W., David L. Lee, William J. Therrien. 2022. "Targeted universalism and tiered systems of adaptive support: Centering intervention on the developmental needs of students with exceptionalities. In Handbook of special education research, edited by Thomas W. Farmer, et. al. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003156857-29/targeted-universalism-tiered-systems-adaptive-support-thomas-farmer-david-lee-william-therrien.

In the past two decades, tiered systems of support have become an increasingly common framework for delivering interventions for all children and youth in general education settings regardless of whether they receive special education services. Although there are many strengths of tiered systems, some features of current approaches may limit their impact and relevance for students with exceptionalities. We discuss tiered systems through the lens of a dynamic, person-in-context perspective of youth development and consider how current models of service delivery may be reframed to center intervention and supports on the developmental needs of students with exceptionalities. We present targeted universalism and tiered systems of adaptive support as a model for delivering services that are responsive to individual students and the diverse ways that they may experience the classroom context. The focus of this model is to utilize data on students’ daily functioning to foster individual adaptation on key developmental factors linked to important academic, behavioral, and social outcomes. Considerations for future research are also discussed.

Jacques, Olivier and Noël, Alain. (2018). "The case for welfare state universalism, or the lasting relevance of the paradox of redistribution." Journal of European Social Policy 28, no.1: 70–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928717700564.

"In 1998, Walter Korpi and Joakim Palme proposed a political and institutional explanation to account for the greater redistributive success of welfare states that relied more on universal than on targeted programmes. Effective redistribution, they argued, resulted less from a Robin Hood logic – taking from the rich to give to the poor – than from a broad and egalitarian provision of services and transfers. Hence, the paradox: a country obtained more redistribution when it took from all to give to all than when it sought to take from the rich to help the poor. Recent studies, however, failed to confirm the existence of this paradox. This article suggests that the original argument was theoretically sound but inadequately operationalized. Korpi and Palme measured universalism indirectly, not by the design or character of social programmes, but rather by their outcomes, namely, by their income effects. These outcomes, however, are influenced by exogenous factors. We use two new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicators to capture universalism directly, through the institutional design of social programmes: (1) the percentage of social benefits that are means or income tested and (2) the proportion of private spending in total social expenditures. These two indicators are combined into a universalism index and tested with a time-series cross-sectional design for 20 OECD countries between 2000 and 2011. This approach, we argue, better captures institutional design, in a way that is consistent with Korpi and Palme’s original argument, and it suggests that there is still a paradox of redistribution in the 21st-century welfare state."

Melnicoe, Hannah and Priyanka Kaura. 2020. "Collaboration and addressing student needs: A rural district’s response to COVID-19." Policy Analysis for California Education. https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/collaboration-and-addressing-student-needs.

"COVID-19 has disrupted California's education system in fundamental ways. Districts across the state are quickly creating strategies to serve all students, and many are designing their response around the needs of their most vulnerable students. This brief highlights the response of Mother Lode Union School District (MLUSD) to the COVID-19 pandemic, in which district staff and teachers were able to collaborate—despite the unprecedented crisis—to meet student needs."

Murillo, Rebecca. 2022. "What’s Lunch Got to do With It?: A Case Study of California Policy, Educational Equity, and the First Statewide Universal School Meals Program." Master's Projects and Capstones at USF. 1366. https://repository.usfca.edu/capstone/1366.

In July 2021, California became the first state to pass a program which guarantees two meals a day to all K-12 students at no cost. This project examines California’s journey to pass this Universal School Meals Program (USMP) and explores how such a program can provide equity for students. I produce a legislative history which traces how school meals are funded and regulated at the federal level, California’s public education funding system, their state meal program, the policies which created changes that allowed the USMP to pass, and the legislation of the program itself. Framework presented by Tyack and Cuban allow for this process to be understood as one of education reform which worked to challenge systems and consider school meals a learning resource as necessary as a textbook or desk. To understand how this program may promote equity, semi-structured interviews were conducted with legislators and advocates involved in the passage of the USMP. Interviews demonstrated that this program was viewed as providing equity in the ways it approached the issue of hunger. Applying concepts of targeted universalism to these interviews allows for a definition of equity to be realized, emphasizing that promoting equity requires an understanding of systems and centering of groups which those systems oppress most. With the legislative history and targeted universalism framework, I present the USMP as an example of how policy can create programs which provide equity, opening a pathway for policy and programs of the future to follow suit.

Nasir, Na'ilah Suad, Jarvis R. Givens, and Christopher P. Chatmon. 2019."We Dare Say Love": Supporting achievement in the educational life of black boys. New York City: Teachers College Press.

Rose, Colin and Mwalimu Donkor Issa. 2018. "A district-wide approach to culturally and linguistically sustaining practices in the Boston Public Schools." Voices in Urban Education 48: 13-18. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1174582.

Boston Public Schools' system-wide professional development on culturally and linguistically sustaining practices (CLSP) creates consistent expectations for educators to address their biases, build relationships with students and parents, and improve instruction—and gives them the tools to do so. In this article, the authors touch on changes at the district level, with the CLSP framework and supports; the school level, with the example of Snowden International High School, a school that has embraced CLSP; and the student level, with the example of the 10 Boys Initiative.

Swinney, Maurice. 2021. "In Chicago, listening is the first step toward equity." The Learning Professional 42, no. 6: 30-32. https://learningforward.org/journal/leading-for-equity/in-chicago-listening-is-the-first-step-toward-equity.

When the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Equity was established in September 2018, our goal was to take a systemic approach to building equity so that every student would have access to a high-quality education, regardless of race, ZIP code, ability, or country of origin. We knew that this goal could not be achieved through a series of stand- alone initiatives. Equity must be the core value that informs every decision we make, from capital improvements to curriculum design, and it requires attention from every member of our staff, schools, and communities. When I was asked to share our district’s journey toward systemic equity in The Learning Professional, I initially thought I would focus on the rollout of the Chicago Public Schools’ Equity Framework, the backbone of the Office of Equity’s support to schools. It outlines a set of shared understandings, language, processes, and tools for supporting our students and communities, especially those most impacted by inequity. But the work of making equity systemic in our district really began before the framework was complete. And it did not begin with the implementation of an initiative or policy. It started with our team’s behavior — how we showed up and how we listened. That story is one we want to tell as other districts begin their own equity journeys

Williams, B. V., & Jagers, R. J. 2022. "Transformative Social and Emotional Learning: Work Notes on an Action Research Agenda." Urban Education 57, no. 2: 191–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085920933340.

The potential for transformative social and emotional learning (SEL) was conceptualized as a lever in service of equity. This article explains the next steps and working assumptions the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has employed to collectively address the inequities that exist in schools. The proposed research agenda has implications for the continuous improvement of various resources. It also supports the formation of research–practice partnerships that will work to find frameworks, spaces, and stakeholder groups that will journey to implement and promote relevant efforts needed to create equitable learning environments where youth can excel.

Higher and Post-Secondary Education

Frederick, Alcione and Melissa Rivas. 2020. "Financial aid innovations for college affordability and mitigating student debt, Brief no. 1: The pandemic, college affordability, and student debt." TIAA Institute and Association of Public & Land Grant Universities, November 2020.
https://www.aplu.org/wp-content/uploads/the-pandemic-college-affordability-and-student-debt.pdf.

Frederick, Alcione and Melissa Rivas. 2021. "Financial aid innovations for college affordability and mitigating student debt, Brief no. 2: CARES Act—Lessons learned: Affordability Fellows’ insights on emergency funding, student need, and the impact of the CARES Act." TIAA Institute and Association of Public & Land Grant Universities, March 2021.
https://www.aplu.org/wp-content/uploads/financial-aid-innovations-for-college-affordability-and-mitigating-student-debt.pdf.

Frederick, Alcione, Julia Michaels, and Kate Michaels. 2021. "Financial aid innovations for college affordability and mitigating student debt, Brief no. 3: Addressing student need beyond crisis management." TIAA Institute and Association of Public & Land Grant Universities, June 2021.
https://www.aplu.org/wp-content/uploads/addressing-student-need-beyond-crisis-management.pdf.

Student Affairs Now. 2023. "Applying Targeted Universalism to Student Success." Conversation with Pavani Reddy and Dr. Brian Reed. Video, September 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_6wWXnuGAI.

Employment

Anderson, Ryan, Jolene De Jong, and Joseph White. 2022. "Places to belong: Practical considerations for creating inclusive and impactful places of work." Cooperative Real Estate Journal 12, no. 1 (Autumn): 65-75.
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/hsp/crej/2022/00000012/00000001/art00007?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf.

This paper is designed to help corporate real estate (CRE) leaders create spaces that improve employee experiences and the impact of their workplace on organisational outcomes. With heightened interest in the role of post-pandemic corporate offices, home workspaces, flex spaces and other environments for supporting and connecting employees, now is an opportune time for CRE leaders to elevate the role of their workplace strategy by focusing on belonging. The paper draws upon years of research and exploration conducted by MillerKnoll brands and our customers. If desired, the foundational elements listed within it can be directly imported into an organisation’s existing workplace strategy while using this paper as a guide and catalyst to help team members, consultants and end users better understand the impact of the workplace in strengthening community, promoting a positive culture, and ensuring equitable opportunities for all employees to succeed.

Mulligan, Deanna. 2020. "Insuring the future of work." Stanford Social Innovation Review, 29 September 2020. https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/insuring_the_future_of_work.

In The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System – and how to fix it – education journalist Natalie Wexler concludes that, “there’s no one right way to provide a high-quality education, and this country is too big and varied for one-size-fits-all prescriptions.” She’s right that we’ll need to simultaneously pursue a range of reform efforts.

But who should these investments target? How should we allocate limited resources? For purposes of this exercise, I say everyone, but focus on those who need it most. The Haas Institute at the University of California notes that “in an era of political polarization and fiscal austerity, policy debates too readily become trapped in a binary of either universal responses or targeted solutions.” Its report, Targeted Universalism, calls for universal goals pursued by targeted processes to achieve these goals.3

The outcomes, these investments, are designed to drive forward: job readiness and job placement as well as great career mobility, lower unemployment and widening middle class. These outcomes, in turn, promote increased productivity, economic growth and reduced inequality. The barriers, of course, are many, including lack of funding, a fragmented workforce development pipeline, a lack scale and capacity among those most qualified to do the work, which results in a failure to spread evidence-based programs that work.

Reece, Jason, Christy Rogers, Matthew Martin, and Stephen Menendian. 2010. "ARRA & the Economic Crisis – One Year Later: Has Stimulus Helped Communities in Crisis." The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity. Commissioned and released by the Fair Recovery Coalition. https://www.reimaginerpe.org/files/arraequityoneyearanniv_kirwan_institute_feb2010.pdf.

Facing an escalating economic crisis, newly inaugurated President Obama signed the historic American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (commonly referred to as “the stimulus”) on February 17th 2009.1 The $787 billion stimulus bill was designed to create and preserve jobs, spur economic growth, and be administered with a particular focus on transparency and accountability. The stimulus bill made explicit reference to “assist those most impacted” by the recession. Has ARRA provided relief to our hardest‐hit communities? Has ARRA worked to promote greater racial and socioeconomic equity in our nation? One year into the implementation of ARRA we find mixed results, and offer critical lessons learned from the ARRA experience. In addition, we provide specific recommendations for achieving the goals of the Recovery Act, generating jobs and broadening prosperity, and reducing our racial and economic divide.

Food

Healthy Food Policy Project. "Key Definitions, Health Food Policy Project." Webpage, accessed 26 July 2023. https://healthyfoodpolicyproject.org/about/key-definitions.

Gender

Elliott, Diana and Fay Walker. 2022. "Centering Black Women in Income and Wealth Policymaking." Urban Institute, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/Centering%20Black%20Women%20in%20Income%20and%20Wealth%20Policymaking.pdf.

Exploring the intersections of race and gender help illuminate the ways in which policies and practices can advance equity and narrow income and wealth gaps. The goal of this brief is to show that by centering Black women in thinking about income- and wealth-building research, policy, and program design, outcomes for all Americans could improve. As we describe in this brief, Black women face the greatest disparities in income and wealth outcomes relative to most other groups disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and gender. Many of these disparities are rooted in deliberate policy choices that hinder not only Black women’s economic success, but that of others as well. Centering Black women allows us to examine the complicated interrelationships between history and the present day, the need for individual- and systems-level changes on several fronts to tackle the issues at hand, and how income and wealth inequities are tied together. By exploring multiple intersections—race and gender, income and wealth, past and present—we can begin to find various paths forward for advancing the economic mobility and prosperity of Black women, and accordingly, all Americans.

“Targeted universalism” is another approach to policymaking. Targeted universalism identifies an aspirational goal, accepts that there may be a multiplicity of ways to move different groups toward that goal, and tries to create policies and programs that move everyone toward the same successful end point. This approach does not necessarily advocate for centering any one group but for trying to understand how to move all groups to the same goal. Focusing on a goal achieves the same end as universalism—acknowledging that all people can benefit from a successful policy—but does not focus on the populations themselves. This has the benefit of avoiding fraught politics. A downside of this approach, however, is that it requires understanding the needs of many populations across intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, family, education, and countless other statuses, and tailoring approaches in consideration of these groups. This is an important endeavor but may not be practical for policymakers and others to implement easily."

Health

Aida, Jun, Miho Ishimaru, and Shiho Kino. 2023. "Reconsidering economic interventions to reduce oral health inequalities." Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology 51: 7915. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdoe.12883.

Despite the general recognition of economic factors as fundamental upstream social determinants of health inequalities, interventions to improve health and reduce inequalities tend to focus on proximal health determinants. However, recent socioeconomic crises have increased the focus on economic factors. Health‐related approaches to address economic factors can be divided into two categories: (1) indirect approaches, such as financial support for obtaining dental care and fiscal policies targeting unhealthy commodities and (2) direct approaches, such as cash transfers or provision of a universal basic income. For indirect approaches, policies reducing out-of-pocket payments for dental care appear to improve access to services and reduce oral health inequalities. Price policies targeting tobacco and sugar through taxation are associated with declines in periodontal disease and caries, and sugar taxation appears to reduce oral health inequalities. As regards direct approaches, studies on cash transfers to low-income individuals have found no positive impact on dental visits, while results in relation to caries prevention were inconclusive. No dental studies examined the effect of a population approach to income security, such as basic income. Research on economic interventions for oral health inequalities is scarce, and studies using causal inference methods and natural experiments are urgently needed.

Alper, Joe, Rose Marie Martinez, and Dara Rosenberg (eds). 2022. "Integrating firearm injury prevention into health care: Proceedings of a joint workshop of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Northwell Health; and Peace Initiative." Washington D.C.: National Academies Press.

The workshop's third session featured brief remarks by the three panelists and an extended discussion moderated by Marian Betz of the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The three panelists were LJ Punch from The T St. Louis and the Bullet Related Injury Clinic, Jake Wiskerchen from Zephyr Wellness, and the Reverend Michael McBride from LIVE FREE USA. McBride's work has used a racial equity and public health framework to address the problem using approaches such as harm reduction while trying to have the greatest effect on a community. He noted that in some communities less than 1 percent of the population can be producing more than 60 percent of the gun-related shootings and homicides, which means that it is generally a small number of people who are caught in cycles of violence and firearm conflicts, which have persisted over generations. “What we find, though, is rather than dealing with these conflicts or these individuals or families with a targeted approach, the approach has been a collective punishment framework,” said McBride. The collective punishment framework, he explained, does not create the specificity or nuance needed to achieve a targeted universalism. Targeted universalism is the idea that there may be a universal goal, but because people live in different worlds, the interventions need to be targeted to reflect those different realities and lived experiences.

The national music therapy team responded by adapting not only the way services were delivered, but the way in which they worked together to create content. Three working groups were formed, and an interconnected workflow was developed. Enablers and barriers to families accessing the adapted services, as well as outcomes, were gathered via verbal and written feedback from clients, staff and collaborating organisations. This also provided the opportunity to learn about the emerging needs in the community. By integrating the adaptations into Sing and Grow's regular suite of services, and aligning them within a Targeted Universalism framework, a wider cross-section of the Australian community can benefit from the inclusion of music therapy and music therapy-informed services to improve child outcomes.

Corburn, Jason, Shasa Curl, Gabino Arredondo nda Jonathan Malagon. 2014. "Health in All Urban Policy: City Services through the Prism of Health." Journal of Urban Health 91: 623–636. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-014-9886-3.

In April, 2014, the City of Richmond, California, became one of the first and only municipalities in the USA to adopt a Health in All Policies (HiAP) ordinance and strategy. HiAP is increasingly recognized as an important method for ensuring policy making outside the health sector addresses the determinants of health and social equity. A central challenge facing HiAP is how to integrate community knowledge and health equity considerations into the agendas of policymakers who have not previously considered health as their responsibility or view the value of such an approach. In Richmond, the HiAP strategy has an explicit focus on equity and guides city services from budgeting to built and social environment programs. We describe the evolution of Richmond’s HiAP strategy and its content. We highlight how this urban HiAP was the result of the coproduction of science policy. Coproduction includes participatory processes where different public stakeholders, scientific experts, and government sector leaders come together to jointly generate policy goals, health equity metrics, and policy drafting and implementation strategies. We conclude with some insights for how city governments might consider HiAP as an approach to achieve “targeted universalism,” or the idea that general population health goals can be achieved by targeting actions and improvements for specific vulnerable groups and places.

Geronimus, Arline T., et. al. 2020. "Weathering in Detroit: Place, Race, Ethnicity, and Poverty as Conceptually Fluctuating Social Constructs Shaping Variation in Allostatic Load." The Milbank Quarterly 98: 1171-1218. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12484.

Despite 30 years of attention to eliminating population health inequity, it remains entrenched, calling for new approaches. Targeted universalism, wellness-based local development, and Jedi Public Health approaches that are community informed, evidence based, and focused on improving everyday settings and diverse lived experiences are important policy directions. State and federal revenue transfers are necessary to mitigate the harms of austerity and assure greater equity in fiscal and population health in places like Detroit, Michigan. US population health inequity remains entrenched, despite mandates to eliminate it. To promote a public health approach of consequence in this domain, stakeholders call for moving from risk-factor epidemiology toward consideration of dynamic local variations in the physiological impacts of structured lived experience. Using a community-based, participatory research approach, we collected and analyzed a unique data set of 239 black, white, and Mexican adults from a stratified, multistage probability sample of three Detroit, Michigan, neighborhoods. We drew venous blood, collected saliva, took anthropometric measurements, and assayed specimens to measure allostatic load (AL), an indicator of stress-mediated biological dysregulation, linking participants’ AL scores and survey responses. In a series of nested Poisson models, we regressed AL on socioeconomic, psychosocial, neighborhood, and behavioral stressors to test the hypothesis that race/ethnicity and poverty-to-income ratio (PIR) are conceptually fluctuating variables whose impacts on AL are sensitive to structured lived experience.

Hudson, Kimberly D. and Vanessa Bruce-Miller. 2023. "Nonclinical best practices for creating LGBTQ-inclusive care environments: A scoping review of gray literature." Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 35, no. 2: 218-240, https://doi.org/10.1080/10538720.2022.2057380.

Guidelines for LGBTQ-inclusive care have been developed by a number of expert organizations to mitigate significant barriers to accessing quality physical and mental health care. This scoping review synthesized nonclinical best practices for creating LGBTQ-affirming care environments as described in 12 publicly available resources. Results were organized into seven domains: (1) interpersonal quality; (2) visual cues in the physical environment; (3) facilities and administrative environment; (4) workforce and workplace; (5) trainings; (6) research, assessment, and evaluation; and (7) outreach and engagement. Innovative practices are highlighted, including margin-to-center approaches and engagement in political action. Recommendations for practice and research are discussed.

Louis-Charles, Hans, Lemur Teron, Nakeina E. Douglas-Glenn, and Amidu Kalokoh. 2023. "Unmasking disaster disparities and inequality in local emergency management." In Racial Equity, COVID-19, and Public Policy, edited by Elsie L. Harper-Anderson, Jay S. Albanese, and Susan T. Gooden. Oxfordshire: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003286967-2/unmasking-disaster-disparities-inequality-local-emergency-management-hans-louis-charles-lemir-teron-nakeina-douglas-glenn-amidu-kalokoh.

Mate, Kedar S. 2022. "The Curb Cut." American Journal of Medical Quality 37, no. 3: 272-275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1097/JMQ.0000000000000022.

Wiley, Lindsay F. 2023. "Universalism, vulnerability, and health justice." UCLA Law Review 70: 204-228. https://www.uclalawreview.org/universalism-vulnerability-and-health-justice/.

This Essay responds to two recent articles which, on the surface, appear to pull the health justice movement in different directions: Angela Harris and Aysha Pamukcu’s The Civil Rights of Health and Martha Albertson Fineman’s Vulnerability and Social Justice. As a framework for health law scholarship and advocacy, health justice emphasizes communitarian problem-solving to secure distinctively public and universal interests in access to health care and healthy living and working conditions. In this regard, health justice has much in common with Martha Fineman’s theory of universal vulnerability. The health justice framework also insists that empowerment of people who are particularly vulnerable to injury, illness, and premature death due to social subordination is essential to realizing health justice. Angela Harris and Aysha Pamukcu have identified antisubordination as the bedrock of the health justice framework. On the surface, these dual commitments of health justice—to communitarian universalism and to antisubordination as a tool for mitigating particular vulnerability—are in tension with each other. This Essay tackles that tension head-on. Rather than compromising on a “both/and” approach, I argue that a deeper reconciliation is possible through what I dub “contextualized universalism.” I argue that contextualized universalism, grounded in shared vulnerability and community empowerment, is antisubordinationist and is the best path forward for health justice.

Housing

United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. 2022. All In: The federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness. https://www.usich.gov/All_In.pdf.

Incarceration

Reeder, Anne L. 2023. "Targeted approaches, universalism, and targeted universalism: Opportunities for the US Correctional health care system." Journal of Correctional Health Care 29, no. 4: 252-257. https://doi.org/10.1089/jchc.22.03.0022

Social policy has traditionally been implemented in two ways: using targeted or universal approaches. Each of these mechanisms has advantages and disadvantages to the populations to whom the policies are applied and to the system applying the policies. A third approach to social policy implementation has emerged: targeted universalism. Targeted universalism is not simply a combination of targeted and universal approaches. It stands apart as a unique way of conceptualizing and implementing social policy. This viewpoint provides an overview of targeted approaches, universalism, and targeted universalism to social policy development and implementation. It examines the ways targeted universalism could be applied to the U.S. correctional health care system to ensure that people who are incarcerated receive the health care to which they are constitutionally entitled.

Organizational management

Kania, John, Junious Williams, Paul Schmitz, Sheri Brady, Mark Kramer and Jennifer Splansky Juster. 2022 "Centering equity in collective impact," Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/centering_equity_in_collective_impact.

Once collective impact efforts have drawn sufficient insight from historical context and disaggregated quantitative data and qualitative data outlining the experience of those being marginalized, participants must target strategies differentially to subgroups to achieve better community outcomes. The targeted universalism approach of john a. powell, of UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, demonstrates one way to operationalize racial equity through targeting interventions to subgroups. “Fairness is not advanced by treating those who are situated differently as if they were the same,” powell says. “A targeted universal strategy is one that is inclusive of the needs of both the dominant and marginal groups but pays particular attention to the situation of the marginal group.”

Targeted universalism importantly argues that our goal should be not just reducing disparities but moving everyone to better outcomes. If only 50 percent of white children read at grade level and 30 percent of Black children read at grade level, closing the disparity still leaves 50 percent of children below grade level. We may have a universal goal for our community, such as reading proficiency, but we need to understand the different barriers various subgroups face and tailor our strategies and resources to address those specific barriers. Failing to target interventions is likely to maintain, and sometimes exacerbates, the existing disparities.

Piff, Justin. 2021. "Data in collective impact: Focusing on what matters." Stanford Social Innovation Review, 13 December 2021. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/data_in_collective_impact_focusing_on_what_matters.

Throughout the US, communities are designed to advance opportunities for some residents—likely white and affluent—while failing to serve others. In the oft-quoted words of Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets managed.” If data masks disparities by race, ethnicity, gender, or other identities in the communities we serve, we fail to address inequity and miss the opportunity to influence change that really matters. Tailoring data collection for context—and collecting, analyzing, and sharing data that allow us to understand communities—are essential actions to achieve equitable outcomes.

Collective impact initiatives must use data that highlight, not conceal, the experiences of the people they aim to support. Dr. john a. powell has helped communities think about equity through the approach of targeted universalism, which focuses on “setting universal goals pursued by targeted processes to achieve those goals.” Organizations, systems, and funders will—often inadvertently—work around the populations they should prioritize. Communities must use data to acknowledge where disparities exist and then address the structural inequities experienced by these groups.

Outside the United States

Leubolt, Bernhard, Karin Fischer, and Debdulal Saha. 2014. "Are targeting and universalism complimentary or competing paradigms in social policy? Insights from Brazil, India, and South Africa." International Journal of Labour Research 6, no. 1: 75-94. https://labordoc.ilo.org/permalink/41ILO_INST/1s2ok2m/alma994847783402676.

The article deals with the prevailing paradigms of social policy. Drawing on the distinction between universalist (rights-based) and targeted (poverty-centred) social welfare policies, the authors examine the welfare regimes and recent policy innovations in Brazil, South Africa and India, namely conditional cash transfers, food transfer schemes and employment programmes. In order to reassess the relationship between targeting and universalism, they analyse the historical and contemporary dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Their conclusion is that the two paradigms are not mutually exclusive. They propose to base the combat against poverty and inequality in emerging economies with persistent poverty and inequality on “targeted universalism," thus avoiding the pitfalls of the dominant approaches.

Philanthropy

Barr Foundation. 2013. "Finding the ‘just’ in climate change." https://www.barrfoundation.org/blog/finding-the-just-in-climate-work.

We all live within structures that provide opportunities e.g. the opportunity to access education, health care, food, transportation, communications, etc. These structures unevenly distribute benefits and burdens to different groups. Seen another way, individuals are situated in the systems differently. For example, an African American youth in Roxbury MA is geographically segregated from educational and job opportunities compared to a wealthier white youth that lives close to downtown and public transportation. In another example, a report by the Dukakis Center found that in Boston black commuters spend an extra 66 hours a year waiting, riding, and transferring than white bus riders.

Cohen, Rick. "Barr Foundation moves from ‘diversity’ to ‘targeted universalism’." Nonprofit Quarterly, 15 March 2013. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/barr-foundation-moves-from-diversity-to-targeted-universalism/.

Everyday Impact Consulting, Health Innovations Group. 2022. "Recommendations for The California Endowment’s Social Bond Health Systems Investments: From a stakeholder-driven design process." 14 February 2022.

powell, john a., Jeff Raikes, Jenn Hoos Rothberg. 2021. "Targeted universalism and bridging." Filmed 9 November 2021 at the Social Impact Exchange, Exchange 2021: The Systems Summit. Panel conversation, 1:04:23. https://socialimpactexchange.org/exchange2021-plenaries-targeted-universalism/.

Politics and Government

Christie, Natasha V. and Shannon B. O’Brien. 2020. "Transcending the veil: Barack Obama’s rhetoric and strategic racial representation." National Review of Black Politics 1, no. 2: 208-228. https://doi.org/10.1525/nrbp.2020.1.2.208.

This work examines how Barack Obama’s speeches and remarks used various rhetorical techniques to strategically maneuver his rhetoric to address racial issues and represent African American concerns. The results of a content analysis of a selection of Obama’s speeches and remarks confirm that Obama and his speechwriters favored the use of statements of color-blind universalism. However, when making certain remarks regarding civil rights issues or perceived racial issues, the pattern shifted, presenting a rare glimpse of the unbalanced representation of African American concerns. These findings suggest that Barack Obama’s speeches and remarks performed double-consciousness; they used universal, balanced, and targeted universalism rhetorical techniques as a genuine, congruent political style for representing African American concerns as a “raced” politician.

Gooden, Susan T. 2017. "Social Equity and Evidence: Insights from Local Government." Public Admininistration Review 77, no. 6 (November/December): 822-828. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12851.

This article examines the role of evidence-based decision making in social equity, with a particular focus on local government. It offers an assessment of the past, present, and future of such efforts by engaging themes from Matias Valenzuela's article based on King County, Washington. King County is one of more than 70 local governments that are members of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, a growing national network of governments using an evidence-based approach to achieve racial equity. In general, previous social equity measures have focused largely on measuring the extent to which disparities exist. More recently, tools and resources have become available to assist local governments in designing and evaluating their approach and performance in reducing social inequities. Future evidence should include more standardized measures to benchmark success, provide comparative analysis, and better support the identification of best practices.

Perry, Ravi K. 2013. "Deracialization Reconsidered: Theorizing Targeted Universalistic Urban Politics." In 21^st Century Urban Race Politics: Representing Minorities as Universal Interests, edited by Ravi K Perry, xxiii-xliii. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-7449(2013)0000018004.

Perry, Ravi K. 2021. "Moving the Needle? Obama, Targeted Universalism, and the Black LGBTQ Community." In After Obama: African American Politics in a Post-Obama Era, edited by Todd C. Shaw, Robert A. Brown and Joseph P. McCormick II, 170-198. New York City: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479807277.003.0007.

In this chapter, I discuss the evolution of the Obama administration’s policies that affected the lives of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities. I discuss the dilemma—the inclusionary dilemma—that for all the ways President Obama and his administration may have moved the needle on American public opinion and the embrace of LGBTQ civil rights and marriage equality, there was less movement in terms of African American attitudes and, in turn, relatively less progress for Black LGBTQ communities. Having said this, however, I believe the targeted universalism of the administration still mattered in improving the lives of Black LGBTQ families. As I explain, targeted universalism is a policy approach whereby a policy that is crafted to appeal to and positively affect a very broad constituency—i.e., health care insurance and American uninsured families—has a positive ancillary effect upon the well-being of a specific constituency—e.g., Black LGBTQ uninsured families.

Perry, Ravi K. and Andrea Owens-Jones. 2013. "Balancing Act: Racial Empowerment and the Dual Expectations of Jack Ford in Toledo, Ohio." In 21st Century Urban Race Politics: Representing Minorities as Universal Interests, edited by Ravi K. Perry, 181-200. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-7449(2013)0000018013.

Purpose – To examine how Black mayors in majority-White cities successfully incorporate the interests of African-Americans into their overall agenda for the city and the said effectiveness of this strategy electorally. Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing data from elite interviews and local newspaper articles, we apply the theory of targeted universalism to the governing approach of Jack Ford.

Findings – Mayors of color often come into office with the dual responsibility of being an advocate for their respective racial group and a leader for the city as a whole. Jack Ford, the first African-American to be elected as mayor in Toledo, Ohio, took this challenge on gladly, but with mixed success. We find that Jack Ford used his powers as mayor to improve social conditions for Blacks in Toledo, yet also faced challenges in trying to better their economic opportunities. Moreover, he failed to parlay these particularistic efforts into a second electoral victory. In this case, a targeted universalistic policy approach to advancing Black interests had limited effectiveness. The single mayoral term of Jack Ford suggests that Black executives must walk a fine line between their (assumed or expected) racial empowerment role and their duty to advance the various interests that exist among residents of their city. Hence, we find that in order to have lasting electoral success Black mayors must be acutely aware of what is expected of them by the various constituencies they serve and govern accordingly.

Research limitations/implications – Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

Practical implications – The chapter includes implications for the development of an effecting Black mayoral governing strategy wherein the mayor can successfully advocate for the advancement of black interests in majority-White cities with specific policy proposals and programmatic developments.

Originality/value – This chapter fulfills an identified need to study the governance of Black mayors in medium-sized cities and their representation of Black interests in the majority White municipal context.

Public Health

Dodge, Kenneth A. and W. Benjamin Goodman. 2019. "Universal Reach at Birth: Family Connects," Future of Children 29, no. 1 (Spring); 41-60. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1220080.pdf.

Developed and tested in Durham, NC, Family Connects—now in place at 16 sites in the United States—aims to reach every family giving birth in a given community. The program rests on three pillars. The first is home visiting: trained nurses (or other program representatives) welcome new babies into the community, typically at the birthing hospital, then work with the parents to set up one or more home visits when the baby is about three weeks old so they can identify needs and connect the family with community resources. The second pillar, community alignment, is an assembly of all community resources available to families at birth, including child care agencies, mental health providers, government social services, and long-term programs for subgroups of families with identified needs, such as Healthy Families and Early Head Start. The third pillar, data and monitoring, is an electronic data system that acts as a family-specific psychosocial and educational record (much like an electronic health record) to document nurses' assessments of mother and infant, as well as connections with community agencies.

McLaren, Lindsay. 2019. "In defense of a population-level approach to prevention: why public health matters today." Canadian Journal of Public Health 110: 279–284. https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-019-00198-0.

A focus on populations, and a corresponding population-level approach to intervention, is a foundation of public health and is one reason why public health matters today. Yet, there are indications that this foundation is being challenged. In some policy and practice domains, and alongside growing concern about the social determinants of health and health equity, there has been a shift from a population-level or universal approach to intervention, to a targeted approach focusing on those experiencing social or economic vulnerability. More than 30 years ago, Geoffrey Rose articulated strengths and limitations of population-level and high-risk approaches to prevention. In light of a strong analogy between “high risk” and “targeted” approaches, it seems timely, in a forum on why public health matters today, to revisit Rose’s points. Focusing on points of overlap between strengths and limitations of the two approaches as described in public health (population-level; high-risk) and social policy (universal; targeted), I illustrate strengths of a population-level approach from the point of view of health equity. Although different circumstances call for different intervention approaches, recent discourse about the weakening of public health suggests that there is value in discussing foundations of the field, such as the population-level approach, that we as a community may wish to defend.

Moffatt, Hannah, Karen Fish, Suzanne Schwenger, and Subha Sankaran. 2013. "Universal and Targeted Approaches to Health Equity, National Collaborating Center for Determinants of Health." St. Francis Xavier University. https://nccdh.ca/images/uploads/Approaches_EN_Final.pdf.

Targeted universalism is a blended approach that recognizes that universalism can still result in an unacceptable health gap, and that a targeted approach can have little effect on the slope of the health gradient. Targeted universalism defines goals for all, identifies the obstacles faced by specific groups, and tailors strategies to address the barriers in those situations.

Sometimes the targeted aspect of this blended approach can result in benefits for all. For example, when application forms are adapted to plain language versions for low literacy clients, all users benefit from the clarity. While targeted universalism is an increasingly familiar framework in Canada and the United States, a somewhat similar approach called proportionate universalism is gaining acceptance in Europe and the United Kingdom. A proportionate universalism approach recognizes that to level up the gradient, programs and policies must include a range of responses for different levels of disadvantage experienced within the population. A leading proponent of this approach is Michael Marmot, past Chair of the World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. In his words, “Focusing solely on the most disadvantaged will not reduce health inequalities sufficiently. To reduce the steepness of the social gradient in health, actions must be universal, but with a scale and intensity that is proportionate to the level of disadvantage.”

Public Services

Lopez, M. Elena, Bharat Mehra and Margaret Capse. 2023. "An Exploratory Social Justice Framework to Develop Public Library Services with Underserved Families," Public Library Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2023.2187180.

An issue in the 21st century is how public libraries can be strategic and impactful to achieve greater equity. Based on a qualitative meta-analysis of chapters from the authors’ book A Librarian’s Guide to Engaging Families published in 2021, this article presents a framework of social justice to strengthen library services to engage underserved families in student learning. Three themes include: 1) Public libraries welcome underserved families using targeted universalism and active inclusion strategies. 2) They take bold leadership to rectify historically imbalanced inequities by removing barriers and reallocating resources. 3) They respect family roles/agency and uphold community economic development.

Public Policy

Dodge, Kenneth A. and W. Benjamin Goodman. 2019 "Universal Reach at Birth: Family Connects," Future of Children 29, no. 1 (Spring); 41-60. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1220080.pdf.

Developed and tested in Durham, NC, Family Connects—now in place at 16 sites in the United States—aims to reach every family giving birth in a given community. The program rests on three pillars. The first is home visiting: trained nurses (or other program representatives) welcome new babies into the community, typically at the birthing hospital, then work with the parents to set up one or more home visits when the baby is about three weeks old so they can identify needs and connect the family with community resources. The second pillar, community alignment, is an assembly of all community resources available to families at birth, including child care agencies, mental health providers, government social services, and long-term programs for subgroups of families with identified needs, such as Healthy Families and Early Head Start. The third pillar, data and monitoring, is an electronic data system that acts as a family-specific psychosocial and educational record (much like an electronic health record) to document nurses' assessments of mother and infant, as well as connections with community agencies.

Gooden, Susan T. and Anthony Starke. 2021. "Social equity and public administration." In Handbook of Theories of Public Administration and Management, edited by Thomas A. Bryer, 45-53. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789908251.00013.

Theories of social equity provide normative guidance to public administrators in defining and achieving fairness. This chapter begins by briefly examining the age-old disconnect between social equity theory and practice. It focuses on four theories of social equity: Theory of Justice, Organizational Justice, Compound Theory of Social Equity, and Targeted Universalism, discussing each theory and examining tradeoffs in practical applications. It concludes by examining the normative guidance provided by social equity theories, as well as remaining unsettled questions.

Perry, Ravi K. 2020. "Targeted universalism in urban communities: Racial discourse and policy rhetoric as harmony." In Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy: Can We Make American Democracy Work?, edited by Melody C. Barnes, Corey D.B. Walker, and Thad M. Williamson, 199-220. Cheltenham and Camberley: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Mayors’ rhetorical efforts for policy proposals of benefit to the least advantaged can be both morally just and politically advantageous. Policy/program development and targeted-universal political messaging that builds the capacity of minorities to compete can generate crossover electoral appeal. Examining how the framing of racial language by politicians and candidates impacts policy outcomes for constituents and communities, the author explores how racial language can be both inclusive of the shared memory of oppression of marginalized groups and cognizant and reflective of majority community members’ goals of social justice. He demonstrates how political discourse can be racial without being racialized or deracialized. He discusses the implications of racial discourse for urban politics in the 21st century.

Perry, Ravi K. 2013. "Epilogue: Future Prospects for Targeted Universalism." In 21^st Century Urban Race Politics: Representing Minorities as Universal Interests, edited by Ravi K. Perry, 297-300. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-7449(2013)0000018018.

Given the rise of a new generation of minority political office-holders throughout the United States, many have begun to theorize about the breadth of the deracialization concept. Some scholars have labeled a new generation of Black leaders as post-racial (Gillespie, 2010). Others have chosen the term trans-racial (Morrison, Fair, & Rollins, 2012). Some have argued that the concept first defined by McCormick and Jones in 1993 has been applied too narrowly by scholars (McCormick & Jones, 1993). They have found that a broader definition encompasses the various nuanced “post-deracialization” minority officer-holders elected to various positions in the recent past.

Perry, Ravi K., ed. 2013. 21^st Century Urban Race Politics: Representing Minorities as Universal Interests. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Perry, Ravi K. 2014. Black Mayors, White Majorities: The Balancing Act of Racial Politics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Six, Hannah. 2019. "A Shared Belonging: Designing for equitable micromobility in Portland, Oregon." University of Oregon, Scholars’ Bank, Landscape Architecture Mater’s Projects, https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/24647.

Portland Oregon’s Forest Park—one of the largest urban forests in the United States—usership is in a state of inequitable distribution, disproportionately allocating “the benefits and burdens of [urban] growth and change”. Geospatial and economic transportation barriers in access to amenities exist with a disproportionate impact on residents of color. The embedded structural and institutional impacts of inequity influence an individual’s transportation environment and access to amenities. The urban transportation system is in a state of innovation and change. Shared micromobility has quickly become a part of American cities, bringing opportunities and challenges to an equitable future. The introduction of micromobility, on America’s car-oriented streets create a tension between the benefits of increased equity and burdens of poor network safety. The disproportionate burden of poorly designed, caroriented streets are majority bared by low-income residents of color. This research conceives of design interventions to relieve the tension between safety and equity to procure the opportunity for emergent forms of micromobility to exist. Providing space in the right-of-way to encourage equitable and carbon reducing forms of transportation can play a critical role in allocating open space resources for vulnerable, historically left out residents. This project examines the opportunity for shared micromobility to bridge Forest Parks access gap. Shared micromobility has vast equitable potential to strengthen connections between economic centers of opportunity, amenities and vulnerable residents. Aside clear potential, the risk of othering and perpetuating historic and contemporary inequalities exists. john a. powell’s conceptual framework, targeted universalism and belonging propel this project to consider interventions that aim to disrupt and dissolve structures of exclusion. This project uses mapping to understand the barriers of micromobility, amenity distribution and bike infrastructure. Politically and economically vulnerable communities are identified and overlaid with the geographic extent of micromobility trips informing a proposal for a protected route—Forest Lane. Forest Lane is a micro-modal transit route that serves historically and currently marginalized communities to belong and exist in Portland with access to Portland’s beloved Forest Park.

Scientific publishing

Wagner, Jennifer K., et al. 2021. "Centering equity in Human Genetics and Genomics Advances." Human Genetics and Genomics Advances 2, no.4: 1-3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8756494.

HGG Advances is committed to equity as a key guiding principle in its scholarly activities and daily operations. Equity is often defined as a state of being fair and just. In contrast to equality or parity, centering equity means recognizing that some groups (e.g., Black, indigenous, and other persons of color sometimes referred to as ‘‘BIPOC’’ communities; women; those from low-to-middle-income countries or ‘‘LMICs’’; and LGBTQIAþ communities) have experienced historic injustices and traumas attributable to social formations and processes derived from global imperialism and colonialism that unduly disadvantage scientists and authors in professional pursuits, among other aspects of life. This recognition of structural racism and discrimina- tion is necessary for the design and selection of strategies and tactics to rectify these injustices and their downstream consequences. What does this principle mean for practice? We draw on the practical policy approach to equity known as ‘‘targeted universalism’’—the use of targeted processes to achieve universal goals, deliberately establishing policies and practices to dismantle forces of marginalization, other-ing, and exclusion in the pursuit of equity. In the context of scientific publishing, we think operationalizing targeted universalism requires consideration of topics, authors, and needed supports for greater diversity, inclusion, and equity, all three of which are necessary for a sense of belonging and full parity of participation in the scientific community.

Urban Planning

Goins, Rachel, Tiffany Boyd, Monica Young, Margy Bogle, and Sarah Gillespie. 2019. "An equity toolkit for promise neighborhoods: Advancing equitable outcomes through the performance management cycle." Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/equity-toolkit-promise-neighborhoods-advancing-equitable-outcomes-through-performance-management-cycle.

This brief describes how Promise Neighborhoods can apply an equity lens to address disparate outcomes as a path to achieving better results for all children and families. Promise Neighborhoods is a federal initiative that aims to improve the educational and developmental outcomes of children and families in diverse communities, including urban neighborhoods, rural areas, and tribal lands. Effective Promise Neighborhoods follow a performance management cycle—that is, steps to align services with the needs of individuals and families and to track and improve progress and results. Within these cycles are critical opportunities to address disparities. We introduce concepts such as data segmentation, cocreation, and targeted universalism to help leaders bring a more powerful equity lens to planning and implementing initiatives focused on improving social and educational outcomes for all students.

Hazarika, Sanjukta. 2021 "‘On Reclaiming the Streets for the People’: Understanding Equity in Public Space Planning Strategies Through an Analysis of the Open Streets Program in New York City." Masters Thesis, Columbia University, Academic Commons. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-ad9g-0g98.

Streets are a vital part of the public realm. They no longer simply exist for mobility but as a way to act out democracy. As New York City garnered global attention in becoming an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, city officials looked to streets to provide outdoor respite from months of indoor isolation for New Yorkers. This came as a response to the ‘new normal’ that unfolded as a result of the pandemic; New Yorkers were spending time outdoors and taking to the streets for everyday activities while being able to safely follow social distancing protocols. Open Streets were a lifeline for the city’s recovery. The pandemic gave urban planners and policymakers an opportunity to rethink our streets for a more climate-resilient, less car-dependent future.

If these Open Streets bring with it social, economic and environmental benefits, it is only fair that all New Yorkers have the same level of access to it. The approach will have to begin with justice. It would be the most reasonable to have Open Streets for those that need it the most — the neighborhoods hit the hardest by COVID-19, the ones with the least access to quality public open spaces, and the communities with the least mobility options. This thesis explores the meaning behind equity with regard to this program. However, the rise of community organizing surrounding the program has given rise to some of the city’s best Open Streets. Equity, with regard to this program, then calls for a more nuanced definition — it is about understanding and responding to the needs of each community.

The thesis looks into the genesis of the Open Streets program in New York City and analyzes its implementation. Through a case study analysis, it evaluates Open Streets in Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Jackson Heights in Queens. In comparing how different communities across the city experience this program, this research aims to explore what has and hasn’t been successful, in considering a more robust, permanent model for the future.

If these Open Streets bring with it social, economic and environmental benefits, it is only fair that all New Yorkers have the same level of access to it. The approach will have to begin with justice and equity. It would be the most reasonable to have Open Streets for those that need it the most — the neighborhoods hit the hardest by COVID-19, the ones with the least access to good quality public open spaces, and the communities with the least mobility options. Equity, with regard to this program, then calls for a more nuanced definition — it is about understanding and responding to the needs of each community. The strength of community organizing surrounding the program has given rise to some of the city’s best Open Streets. In creating and delivering such a program with equitable outcomes in mind, this research looks into the Targeted Universalism framework.

A strong indication of the reasons behind minority mayors' shift from deracialization can be found in the changes in the U.S. population over the last two decades. The changes in population has eroded – or potentially is in the process of eroding – a key variable in the election of minority mayors: the presence of a majority Black population. For example, with cities losing Black population while gaining Whites and Latinos, the conditions under which Black candidates run for mayor in many U.S. cities are quite different from the experience of the first elected Black mayors. Washington, DC has lost 16% of its Black population since 1990. Between 2000 and 2010, the Black population decreased by 6%. Yet, during the same time period, the district has experienced increases in White population, with a 14% increase since 2000. With a Black population of less than 50% as compared to a Black population over 70% in 1980, the district has enjoyed the distinction of no longer being a majority-Black city (Washington Post, 2007). Atlanta, Georgia also has experienced a loss of Black population (Cox News Service, 2007). These data are suggestive of trends where, if they continue, ambitious Black candidates for mayor will find their electoral coalitions composed of increased numbers of Whites and Latinos in areas where Blacks have dominated for decades.

Wealth Gap

Hanks, Angela, Danyelle Solomon, and Christian E. Weller. 2018. "Systematic Inequality: How America’s structural racism helped create the black-white wealth gap." Center for American Progress. Report, February 21, 2018. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systematic-inequality/.

"When considering policy recommendations to close the racial wealth gap, one thing must be acknowledged: Poor blacks and poor whites are not similarly situated because whites have been and continue to be treated more favorably than blacks by government institutions. Targeted universalism provides a framework for closing the racial wealth gap because, as [p]owell notes, it is “inclusive of the needs of both the dominant and the marginal groups but pays particular attention to the situation of the marginal group.” Furthermore, it is essential that we accept full responsibility for our nation’s history and the systems in place if the goal is to move forward and close the wealth gap between white and black Americans. Going forward, policymakers should use a targeted universalism framework to design and advance policies that ensure equity."