Truth + Repair began in 2023 when a group of professors and practitioners of public humanities all gathered at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to discuss how to understand New Jersey’s history of health, racial disparity, and communal resolve. Our conversation was narrowly focused on one city, but as the conversation continued, we realized the importance of an expanded view of the Garden State. Our central question was: How can history inform our understanding of racial disparities in health in the Garden State?

That year, the group of scholars applied for and received a one-year planning grant from the Foundation to develop an approach to study the historical impacts of structural racism on communal health outcomes in the state.

Since then, Truth + Repair has developed local research projects on histories of structural inequality and struggles for justice in partnership with students, scholars, and cultural workers across New Jersey, all dedicated to stewarding useable and enabling research in pursuit of equitable health outcomes for all New Jerseyans.