Health Department Striving To Be Model of Anti-Racism
New deputy commissioner drawn to job through anti-racism focus, personal experience with department.
“We know as a department that if we focus on racial equity, we’re going to improve the health of this city.”
That’s the north star for the Milwaukee Health Department under Commissioner Michael Totoraitis. And as such, Totoraitis and Deputy Commissioner of Clinical Services Jefflyn Brown are working to make the Milwaukee Health Department a model of anti-racism.
It’s part of a broader strategy to rebuild trust in public health following the polarization of the COVID-19 pandemic and to make Milwaukee the healthiest city in Wisconsin.
The goal, said Totoraitis and Brown in a 2024 interview, is to position the department as anti-racist by 2027. That includes training, conversations, creating equitable data policies, sharing data publicly and reviewing policies and procedures for potential bias.
It also includes making the department’s approximately 240-person staff reflect the diversity found in Milwaukee.
Brown, who is Black, said she has experienced racism both as a nurse caring for someone and in her personal life. She joined the department in April 2024, but first interacted with the department more than two decades ago as a pregnant teenage mother.
“My mission has always been to try to change that narrative to pave the way for the nurses that come behind me, that look like me,” Brown told Urban Milwaukee.
“We want to make sure it’s not just the executive team or it’s not just the frontline staff. We want every level of the department to reflect the demographics of the city,” said Totoraitis.
It’s part of a strategy to build trust in a department that from 2018 to 2021 had five different commissioners. Totoraitis joined the department in 2021 and has served as commissioner since the spring of 2023, retaining many of the deputies who served under his predecessor. The department, he said during an October budget hearing, has benefitted from city-approved wage increases to fill and retain staff.
“A lot of residents of color in particular felt abandoned by the health department because of the transition in leadership and not really feeling like they had an expert they could go to,” said Totoraitis, referencing the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Nationally, it’s the same kind of narrative.”
A forthcoming whitepaper, said the commissioner during the October hearing, will detail specific steps being taken.
The effort isn’t limited to just Totoraitis and Brown. “Deputy Commissioner Bailey Murph has really built this infrastructure within the department that, my hope is, will outlive the legacy of our time as executives,” said the commissioner.
The work also builds on a process initiated by past commissioner Jeanette Kowalik and continued by Kirsten Johnson, under whom Totoraitis served. Kowalik had racism declared a public health crisis in 2019 and released an anti-racism plan in 2020.
Murph has now followed her longtime colleague Johnson to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. But Totoraitis said the racial equity work is a strong legacy Murph has left behind.
“These pipelines do take time,” said Totoraitis in May. He said the department is trying to maintain its visibility at schools and develop a paid apprenticeship program. “When I was in school, I did not think about public health at all. I was on a completely different path.”
Totoraitis said many in the department have also stepped forward to host interns and fellows. “I’m really proud of that,” he told Urban Milwaukee.
Brown said a key step was also adding a question to its student placement form asking if prospective hires were interested in advancing MHD’s anti-racism model, and if so how? “We’ve looked at our orientation program to recognize that maybe they haven’t worked in this scope before,” said Brown. “So we’re really taking the time to meet with them one-on-one and the directions and managers of the program to help them along in their journey and also to understand what our mission, values and strategic plan are and how that plays into everything.”
The 2025 budget presentation notes that 16 staff members have enlisted “equity champions,” and 54% of the staff, as of September, have participated in at least one equity-focused “caring conversation,” an ongoing curriculum-based equity training effort. A staff racial competency survey and an equity assessment are both listed as upcoming efforts.
The budget presentation notes that, at the time, 52% of the staff was white, 30% Black, 10% Hispanic and 6% Asian. Seventy-four percent were city residents. According to the Census Bureau, 38.6% of Milwaukee residents are Black, 36.5% are white, 20.7% are Hispanic and 4.8% are Asian.
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