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Schools are not neutral sites of learning, but rather they (re)produce the powered dominant culture along multiple axes of privilege and oppression (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.) through seemingly benign teaching and learning interactions. Educating to transform schools and society towards more just futures requires acknowledging the historical and ongoing sociopolitical context that both created and maintains inequities. Heeding the calls to incorporate the sociopolitical into science education, and to expand what counts as doing and learning science, we developed two biology units: a middle school unit about the effect of chronic stress on body system interactions, and a high school unit about gene-environment interactions driving health disparities in diabetes. Both units have been implemented in science classrooms through collaboration with a public school district serving minoritized communities with a large proportion of immigrant families. Our collaborative project draws on three equity-oriented frameworks: Rightful Presence (Tan & Calabrese Barton, 2023), Justice-Centered Science Pedagogy (Morales-Doyle, 2024) and Healing Justice (Ginwright, 2015). In this presentation I will illustrate how these theories informed our design conjectures and axiological commitment as we jointly designed these units with teachers and youth. I will also discuss some of the challenges and tensions that arose in both the design and implementation of the units in the context of K-12 public school settings.