ABOUT
Mission
Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania (PSR PA) professionals champion the health of all communities by advocating for socially and environmentally just actions.
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Vision
PSR Pennsylvania develops safe and resilient communities for a healthy future.
Core Values
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Education: We believe in providing evidence-based education for professionals, students, and communities concerning health.
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Collaboration: We believe that working together within communities strengthens our ability to achieve common goals.
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Action-oriented: We believe in taking action to ensure the well-being, resilience, and peace of communities.
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Equity: We believe that ensuring equity and championing vulnerable voices is critical for the health of communities.
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Empathy: We believe in humanizing public health concerns with passion.
ADVOCATING FOR SOCIALLY & ENVIRONMENTALLY JUST ACTIONS
Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania (PSR PA) is a 501(c)(3) public health nonprofit advancing its mission through programs focused on health, environmental justice, and youth empowerment. Supported by health professionals who advocate for and confront the root causes of environmental and health inequities, PSR PA is committed to protecting communities across our region—especially when regulatory agencies fall short.
Our community-rooted initiatives prioritize prevention, elevate frontline voices, and use science and data to validate lived experience. By combining rigorous monitoring, research, and public health advocacy, we work to expose harm, demand accountability, and create lasting change. While “First, do no harm” is a guiding principle in medicine, it is often sidelined in systems that value profit over people. PSR PA challenges that imbalance—fighting for healthier, more just communities from the ground up.
PSR Pennsylvania abides by the Jemez Principles
On December 6-8, 1996, forty people of color and European-American representatives met in Jemez, New Mexico, for the “Working Group Meeting on Globalization and Trade.” The Jemez meeting was hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice with the intention of hammering out common understandings between participants from different cultures, politics and organizations. The following “Jemez Principles” for democratic organizing were adopted by the participants.
1. Be Inclusive
If we hope to achieve just societies that include all people in decision-making and assure that all people have an equitable share of the wealth and the work of this world, then we must work to build that kind of inclusiveness into our own movement in order to develop alternative policies and institutions to the treaties policies under neoliberalism.
This requires more than tokenism, it cannot be achieved without diversity at the planning table, in staffing, and in coordination. It may delay achievement of other important goals, it will require discussion, hard work, patience, and advance planning. It may involve conflict, but through this conflict, we can learn better ways of working together. It’s about building alternative institutions, movement building, and not compromising out in order to be accepted into the anti-globalization club.
2. Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing
To succeed, it is important to reach out into new constituencies, and to reach within all levels of leadership and membership base of the organizations that are already involved in our networks. We must be continually building and strengthening a base which provides our credibility, our strategies, mobilizations, leadership development, and the energy for the work we must do daily.
3. Let People Speak for Themselves
We must be sure that relevant voices of people directly affected are heard. Ways must be provided for spokespersons to represent and be responsible to the affected constituencies. It is important for organizations to clarify their roles, and who they represent, and to assure accountability within our structures.
4. Work Together In Solidarity and Mutuality
Groups working on similar issues with compatible visions should consciously act in solidarity, mutuality and support each other’s work. In the long run, a more significant step is to incorporate the goals and values of other groups with your own work, in order to build strong relationships. For instance, in the long run, it is more important that labor unions and community economic development projects include the issue of environmental sustainability in their own strategies, rather than just lending support to the environmental organizations. So communications, strategies and resource sharing is critical, to help us see our connections and build on these.
5. Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves
We need to treat each other with justice and respect, both on an individual and an organizational level, in this country and across borders. Defining and developing “just relationships” will be a process that won’t happen overnight. It must include clarity about decision-making, sharing strategies, and resource distribution. There are clearly many skills necessary to succeed, and we need to determine the ways for those with different skills to coordinate and be accountable to one another.
6. Commitment to Self-Transformation
As we change societies, we must change from operating on the mode of individualism to community-centeredness. We must “walk our talk.” We must be the values that we say we are struggling for – we must be justice, peace and community.
“It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.”
— Rachel Carson