The work
The Healthcare Reparations Cooperative is a strategic organization whose work is to dismantle dominant narratives and structures related to the medical industrial complex while expanding the possibilities for what health, healing, medicine, and public health can be. We are dedicated to:
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Establishing an independent system for health and healing that uncouples racial capitalism from health.
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Integrating systemic and interpersonal healthcare reparations and resource redistribution into the current systems of health that perpetuate harm for society’s most oppressed communities.
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Catalyzing community-driven research through an intellectual cooperative structure so communities have authentic space to shape and hold their narratives and solutions.
The dream
We dream of a health and healing landscape that does not create and perpetuate, is not biased and informed by, and actively rejects all hierarchies of oppression. We dream of a future where health and healing are systematically equitable and accessible to all.
This requires:
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Dismantling oppressive systems within healthcare and advocating for systemic change that addresses the root causes of health disparities.
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Fostering spaces for greater health equity, social justice, and reparative and accountable work in the healthcare space.
The Healthcare Reparations Cooperative is a push for unifying, creative, and anti-oppressive approaches to a new world where community-care elicits health and healing. Starting from a place of liberation for the most under-resourced and oppressed communities then striving to bring that world to reality in a way that does not hurt communities already experiencing pain at the hand of inequitable systems. Each area weaves and feeds into each other, providing support and accountability.
Healthcare is a system that perpetuates violence and harm on Black and brown people. Thus the core work of Cooperative is the application of abolitionist values to the landscape of healthcare. This requires an internalization of the belief that a liberated future is possible that encompasses Black joy and healing. Community-care is a form of relational healing and by being in relationship with one another we can also create meaningful change.
As a budding cooperative, relationships and growing a movement are imperative values for the HRC. Working in isolation weakens movements and perpetuates the systems of white supremacy that fodder harm.
About our founder
Hadija Steen Mills MPH
I am a child of immigrants, mixed-Black, queer, femme, parent of twins, scholar in the process of indoctrination in the field of public health; my categorical identifiers attempt to represent the intersectional manifestations of oppression that make up my humanity and inform my standpoint. My intersecting identities brought me to the work and have influenced the creation of the Healthcare Reparations Cooperative, and continue to inform all aspects of the work. Witnessing the struggles of my communities and experiencing them firsthand has fueled my determination to challenge the flawed health systems. This endeavor is not just a job; it's a deeply personal mission aimed at transcending mere survival to foster thriving communities.
I am traditionally educated in the area of human sexuality with a focus on reproductive justice and disparities. Currently pursuing a PhD, I hold a Maternal Child Health Master in Public Health, with minors in Epidemiology and Health Equity.
Having grown up on the ancestral land of the Dakota people, what is now known as Minneapolis, I acknowledge my diasporic lineage does not pardon my responsibility as an occupier of this stolen land.
I am deeply passionate about the creation of a world free of inequities and advocates for autonomy for the most systematically oppressed.
photo by sally nixon
Conversations for change
The Healthcare Reparations Cooperative operates…
On the land of the Dakota people. Mni Sota Maḳoce, also known as Minnesota, comes from the Daḳota name for this region. "The land where the waters reflect the skies." This land is sacred and we honor the practices intertwined and irremovable from within it. We commit to furthering and uplifting our collective liberation.
