Framework
Understanding what conditions made these outcomes more likely.
The Racialized Hierarchy of Needs™ reveals how historical, structural, and lived conditions can disrupt essential human needs, shape survival adaptation, and become biologically influential across generations.
The Racialized Hierarchy of Needs™
A visual framework connecting disrupted human conditions to health and human potential.
Conventional approaches often focus on individual behavior or disease after it appears. RHON™ widens the lens by examining the conditions that shape health long before an outcome is visible.
Rooted in the historical and lived experiences of Black communities, the framework illustrates how disruptions to physiological needs, safety, identity, belonging, and purpose can generate chronic survival stress, influence biology, increase disease vulnerability, and limit the capacity to flourish.
For universities, healthcare organizations, workplaces, and communities, RHON™ offers a teachable model for moving beyond individual blame toward more informed approaches to health, well-being, engagement, and restoration.
Bring the framework to your audienceThe Complete Framework
From survival adaptation to restoration and flourishing.
RHON™ maps the relationship between racialized historical conditions, disrupted human needs, chronic stress, and biological dysregulation. It also identifies reparative wellness interventions that support regulation, safety, reconnection, self-determination, and the fuller expression of human potential.
Click to enlargeThe Racialized Hierarchy of Needs™ and accompanying framework are the intellectual property of Dr. Tawainna Houston. © 2026 Tawainna Houston, ND. All rights reserved.