Oregon report has 100 recommendations in responding to the public health crisis of racism

Five years ago, the Oregon legislature declared that racism is a public health crisis. A year later, lawmakers told the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office to come up with recommendations for how to respond to the crisis. The final report detailing that work was just released. It has information about the status of 100 recommendations, ranging from community safety and social services to education and healthcare. We get the details from Kaj Jensen, the author of the new report and the operations and policy analyst with the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Five years ago, the Oregon Legislature declared that racism is a public health crisis. A year later, lawmakers told the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office to come up with recommendations for how to respond to the crisis. The final report detailing that work was just released. It has information about the status of 100 recommendations ranging from community safety and social services to education and health care.

Kaj Jensen is the author of the new report. They are the office’s operations and policy analyst, and they join me now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Kaj Jensen: It’s great to be here, Dave. Thanks so much.

Miller: So what exactly did the legislature task you with four years ago?

Jensen: They said we want you to bring together some community members to form a task force, and we actually formed two task forces. One was made up of folks from all over the state. It was Zoom. It was something that people could participate in either Spanish or English. And the second group actually kind of formed because we had a number of Indigenous folks who said, actually, we’d really like to have a space where we can talk through this work that’s our own.

So there were those two groups of community leaders and community-based organizations, including the commissioners from each of the four advocacy commission’s office. And we said, “What problems are you having and do you have some interesting solutions?”

Miller: It was that open-ended.

Jensen: Yeah.

Miller: You note that in Oregon’s 2025 legislative session, 11 bills related to recommendations that had already bubbled up from your work passed. This year, five more did. And the percentage, sort of the win rate of these is actually pretty high – higher than the average bills of all the ones that are introduced. What are examples of some of the recommendations from this work that are now law?

Jensen: I think one that’s maybe a little bit nerdy, but that I was pleased with: House Bill 3003 in 2025. [It] created some standards around foster youth data. Now, foster youth might not come to mind immediately when you think about health care, but we took a really broad [look] at social determinants of health. So, if you are being separated from your parents … And we know that Black families and families of color experience more interaction with the foster youth system. We actually had a community member come to us and say, “hey, we really need clearer data about what’s going on when these families are separated and be able to track this information to hold folks accountable.” We were able to connect that community member with Senator Gelser Blouin and Senator Nelson, and they were able to come up with some legislation that passed. So we have some greater transparency around those things.

Miller: This maybe is a time to take a step back because, as I mentioned, the work you’re doing stems from this resolution from 2021. The legislature said that racism is a public health crisis. What follows from using public health as a lens? There are other ways to think about and to respond to the effects of racism, but this one is relatively specific. This says public health.

Jensen: Yeah. Once we started having all these conversations, we did an analysis of all of these meetings that we had with people and said, what themes are popping up, and we grouped things under the social determinants of health. So that’s economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhoods and built environments, and social and community context.

Another win that I can give you an example of is we had folks from an organization out in the Gorge get in contact with us. They presented at an Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs meeting and said, “Hey, our members are failing the driver’s license test a lot.”

Miller: The written test.

Jensen: The written test to just get your basic driver’s license. And in fact, only 23% of folks taking the Spanish test were passing, but 51% of folks taking the English test were passing.

Miller: I’m glad you brought this up because this is one of the ones that stood out to me. There’s a page in the report about this. How is this a public health question?

Jensen: Well, if you live somewhere, like your family works in the orchards in Hood River, and you don’t live downtown, and you need to get yourself or your kids to a doctor’s appointment, and there’s no public transportation, how are you going to do that? We have a lot of rural places in Oregon where a driver’s license actually is an important part of how you get access to health care, how you get access to education. And if you don’t have access to be able to drive around legally, your quality of life and your ability to participate in public life is reduced. So the social determinants of health are really broad because there are so many pieces of our life that actually do contribute to our health.

Miller: How are you going to address this without having people who should not be passing this test pass it? So you identified this disparity in the rates of passage from people taking the test in Spanish to English. I don’t think any Oregonian wants people who don’t understand the rules of the road to get a license. So there has to be some kind of a test.

Jensen: Of course.

Miller: What’s a good solution?

Jensen: So what they have done – this actually is a kind of an example of something that didn’t necessarily have to go through the legislature and have new bills passed – we were able to connect them with the right folks at the DMV. It’s been several years now, and they’ve actually come to a place where they’re going to provide a small number of community members some information about how certain words are translated so that those folks can help to improve the translation. Because one of the things that was happening is the book that you study from doesn’t necessarily have the same language and words that the test does. And sometimes the Spanish being used isn’t Mexican Spanish. So those were barriers that were identified by community members.

So it’s not about making things different for folks taking the Spanish test. It’s about making sure that folks taking the Spanish test are having the same experience that someone taking it in English is having.

Miller: One of the issues you highlight in the report is that when a new team took over in 2023, the existing relationships with various community members were severed … or at least they weren’t continued, if I read the report correctly. What does that mean for this work?

Jensen: Well, to be transparent about my experience, this is my first time working in state government. And, when I joined the team, I was really excited about the work. There were three of us. We were introduced by the person who had previously been leading this work to all of the community leaders and everybody, a real warm handoff. But folks who are aware of the inequities that they’re facing and the struggles with getting things to happen through government systems, that trust, no matter how great the new team is, that trust just doesn’t transfer.

And because of the way that things are – this is a little wonky – we have a biannual budget, so every two years, every state agency has to have a new budget. You can’t guarantee any staffing positions that are for a project like this that’s not permanent. So, folks weren’t sure if the legislature was going to pass funding, so they would take other jobs. Something that I think is really important from a community point of view is when we think about doing these projects in the future, I think that something that we could do differently is making sure that there is a little bit more consistency, so that those relationships that are built with community members are honored throughout the whole process.

Miller: Well, that also makes me wonder, at this point, when you try to convene people from various marginalized groups and say, “hey, what’s wrong [and] what solutions would you like to see,” is the answer, “You’ve already asked us or other people like you have asked us a million times. There have been a million reports. Just stop asking us. Just do what we already told you. Stop wasting our time.” Do you hear that?

Jensen: Yes. And people often say it is nicer than that.

Miller: I had limited time to get the point across.

Jensen: Of course. We did hear some of that, so it was really important to me to make sure that our team was doing the research and not asking people to tell us things that we could just go and find out for ourselves. And I think that the conclusion of the report is really link heavy – it’s definitely something you’ll want to look at on a computer. It has so much research, resources and information so that we have a record of a lot of the things that people have already told us, and we can use this material to keep moving forward.

Miller: We did talk about some of the recommendations that have already been turned into legislation, have been passed into law. But the new report, it notes that out of 100 recommendations that are linked to in the report, almost half of them are still in their early stages, some version of early stages. Is anyone going to flesh those out?

Jensen: Yes. We have four advocacy commissions that are supported by our office. The Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs, Oregon Commission on Black Affairs, and Oregon Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs will continue to work on these things. So the ones that are not fully developed mostly means we have a problem. But we haven’t had the time to really have in-depth conversations with community members and community leaders about solutions for that. And it’s not my place or the office’s place to say what the solutions are. We really want to hear that from the folks who are experiencing the problem. So the advocacy commissions are the folks who will continue to help develop those.

Miller: Could H.R.1, also known as the Big Beautiful Bill, impact that work in the future going forward?

Jensen: It definitely already has. We had a number of bills that we hoped to see move forward in the 2025 legislative session, and it was just a really challenging fiscal year. We’re hearing a lot from legislators that if there’s a fiscal ask, a price tag associated with some of the projects or ideas that people have come up with, it’s a really challenging time right now to get those through the process.

Miller: You’re talking about price there, but what about the philosophy of equity?

Jensen: Well, luckily, the funding for our office is not from federal sources. So our office and the advocacy commissions are still able to do the work that we need to do. But yes, it’s a different climate. People are more concerned about their name being attached to some of this work. In fact, I had some folks who were part of a focus group that I ran say, “hey, can you make sure that my name doesn’t appear on any material associated with that because I’m concerned about retaliation?” So, yes, it’s having an impact, but not as bad as it could be.

Miller: Kaj, thanks very much.

Jensen: Thank you.

Miller: Kaj Jensen is the author of this new report. They are the operations and policy analyst for the Oregon Advocacy Commission Office.

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