Over the past three years, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has made a $5 million foray into efforts to get federal, state, and local governments to pay reparations to descendants of enslaved Black Americans.
At first glance, this may seem far removed from the foundation’s signature health-care grant making. But Robert Wood Johnson leaders point to extensive National Institutes of Health research that correlates the impact of America’s history of discrimination and the major health problems Black Americans disproportionately face.