We alumni, students and staff of the Johns Hopkins Academic Institutions in Baltimore and across mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico support the opportunity for all hospital workers to receive pay that will enable equitable access to resources and well-being.
The lack of a live-able wage decreases access to affordable, safe and sanitary housing, affordable health care, equitable education, safe and sanitary transportation, affordable recreation and affordable healthy food. Poverty is the leading cause of poor health, according to the World Health Organization.
The hospital that is rated the No. 1 health care institution in the country, part of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, has trained us to be leaders in preventive and public health, social determinants of health and decreasing health inequity. But by paying its workers wages that do not allow them access to resources necessary for achieving health, the institution contributes not only to Baltimore’s pressing crisis of income inequality — the 10th worst in the United States’ big cities — it contributes to inequality in all the resources not affordable with poverty-level wages.
We can and must do better to change this history and set a new path toward equity, building a better Baltimore for all.
Signed:
Luis Alberto Aviles
Anne-Emanuelle Birn
Tyler Brown
Rebecca Cohen
Nick Cuneo
Hector Gomez Dantes
Lena Z. Denis
Stephanie Farquhar
Ruthie Fesahazion
Kate Flores
Andrea Gerstenberger
Joshua Garoon
Marisela Gomez
Kate Hayman
Issac Howley
Alexander Jenson
Sara Evangeline Larson
Kathryn Leifheit
Sabriya Linton
Lavanya Madhusudan
Jillian Marks
Sara McClean
Nicky Methani
Kate Miele
Isabel Perera
Chavi Rhodes
Adam Richards
Mike Rogers
Max Romano
Samuel Scharff
Anthony Serritella
Tyler Smith
Jenny TIghe
Deanna Wilson
Diana Wohler
Julia Zur