On April 4th, the Voices for Healthy Kids Strategic Advisory Council (SAC) met in Memphis, Tennessee to commemorate the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with thousands of others gathered at the National Civil Rights Museum. They reflected on what his work meant to them and how their own work would pay respect to his legacy.“What I heard in Memphis, from speaker after speaker, is that we are Dr. King’s legacy, and that the only way to honor him, and to reconcile our pride with our pain, is to turn remembrance into resolution, to recommit ourselves to the unfinished work before us,” said Doug Blanke, Founder and Executive Director of the Public Health Law Center.The Voices for Healthy Kids mission is to ensure that all children have access to healthy food and physical activity where they live, learn, and play. We recognize that ensuring children and families in greatest need of the campaigns we support requires us to earnestly and intentionally execute strategies with priority and value placed on specific populations.A crucial piece of this strategy was the formation of the SAC, comprised of 25-member national organizations with unique expertise in improving the health of communities. This team provides strategic guidance and direction to advance coordinated state and local public policy issue advocacy campaigns, explores and advances key movement-wide topics that broadly impact member organizations, and creates a dynamic go-to space for leading stakeholders to learn from each other.“For me, being in Memphis to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death was an honor and a necessity. Dr. King’s message and efforts to advance racial equality and social justice are core to my being and contributed to many of the opportunities I’ve had throughout my life,” said Marjorie Innocent, senior health director in the national office of the NAACP. “As an advisory body to the Voices for Healthy Kids Initiative, the SAC can further its efforts to advance children’s health through more comprehensive policy solutions. While Voices for Healthy Kids’ mission is focused, it is a mission that cannot be achieved without also addressing the broader social factors that shape the lives of children.”Dr. King paved the way by shining a spotlight on the importance of health equity, and the SAC members’ dedication to this initiative is evidence that his words are still heard.  Even before the public health community took up a call to action to fight health equity, Dr. King was uplifting its importance. In 1966, while speaking at a human rights convention, Dr. King stated, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.” Clearly, we must recognize the civil rights movement not only inspired the nation to fight for racial equity, it also served as a catalyst for the work on health injustices.Seventy years before Dr. King gave his speech on health injustice, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bios published his influential works – “The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study” (1899) and his report “The Health and Physique of the Negro American” (1906). Both reports identified differences in health by neighborhood and environmental factors. Without leaders like Dr. Du Bios or Dr. King, there would be no Voices for Healthy Kids.We honor their legacy by continuing to work on behalf of communities that have been marginalized and left out. There is still much work to be done acknowledges Krista Scott, Senior Director for Child Care Health Policy at Child Care Aware of America. “In Memphis, as I reflected on what progress has been made since Dr. King was murdered, I thought about how we are still in the streets, marching for lives, marching to be heard.”While we do not have the answers to all racial injustices in our society, what we do have is the collective work of hundreds of advocates and coalitions across the country working to bring about sustainable policy change.  Our job is to not be the voice for the next MLK, but to ensure that whatever neighborhood she or he comes from has equitable access to healthy food, safe places for physical activity, and vibrant after school programs.In Solidarity.