You are invited to a private breakfast on new research into how anti-DEI campaigns are operating, and what it takes to build public support strong enough to fight back.

Thursday, September 17 | 8:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Location: To be provided with RSVP confirmation

Speakers:

  • Allyn Brooks-LaSure, Chief Communications Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  • Bill Burton, Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer, Bryson Gillette
  • Dawn Carr, Founder and CEO, Mahogany Insights
  • Kimberly Hall, Executive Director, Thruline for Health Equity

Followed by discussion with attendees. Off the record and closed to media. This invitation is non-transferable.

Please RSVP by September 15
Programs are being renamed, funding is being gutted and people who agree with racial health equity are going quiet.

But Americans are open to this conversation more than the current environment suggests. They believe everyone should have a fair chance at a healthy life, and they are willing to hear how race shapes who gets one.

Anti-DEI campaigns have spent years turning that openness into doubt: whether this work is meant for everyone, whether supporting it will cost them something, and false claims about what is at stake. They work as a coordinated system across digital and traditional media, at a scale and speed we have not faced before. And they are not only aimed at people on the fence. They are targeting communities of color, where the case for this work should be strongest and the consequences are most direct.

The result is that people who are open to this work stay quiet, and their agreement never reaches the places it counts: the funding decisions, the public debates and the rooms where this work is defended.

We studied what moves people past that doubt, the way consumer brands study behavior. Across millions of conversations and thousands of people, we found what helps hold support, what loses it and what moves people to act on what they already value.

We will share what we found, then open the discussion. You will leave with:

  • A clear read on how anti-DEI campaigns operate as a coordinated system
  • What people open to this conversation need to hear, in communities of color and beyond
  • Which messages hold up under attack and which backfire
  • When and how to talk about race in this environment

Please direct questions to Angela Acker at aacker@thrulinehe.org.

Thruline for Health Equity is a strategic communications network dedicated to advancing racial health equity.