Resistance to Recognizing Racism as a Public Health Issue
Department and Center Events
This event is the third session in the event series: Racism in Public Health: Historical Perspective and Current Challenges.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins are hosting a speaker series on historical and ongoing forms of racism that operate in the field of public health. This series aims to confront the historical and ongoing forms of racism that exist in the field of public health, while learning about alternative methods of conducting public health that have attempted to resist and challenge such legacies.
Session 4 - Resistance to Recognizing Racism as a Public Health Issue
Thursday November 10, 2022 at 4:00pm EST
Location: Online and In-person, Wolfe St Building, Sommer Hall (E2014)
Speakers: Roland Thorpe, Jr., PhD, Co-Director DrPH Concentration in Health, Equity, And Social Justice Professor, Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., PhD, Associate Professor of History and of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of History, Columbia University; Moderator: Michelle Spencer, MS, Associate Director, Bloomberg American Health Initiative, Associate Scientist, Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Racist systems perpetuate and widen disparities in health as evidenced by historical policies that continue to impact life expectancy, financial stability, education mobility, and education. This session will examine the resistance to counternarratives of racism as a public health issue, why it has taken decades for this recognition, and how to move forward.
Register Here
--- See below for information on future session in the series ---
Session 1 - Race, Racism and the Origins of Epidemiology
Thursday, September 15, 2022 at 12:15pm EST
Speakers: Jim Downs, PhD, MA, Gilder Lehrman- National Endowment for the Humanities Professor, Civil War Era Studies and History, Gettysburg College and Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD, MA, Assistant Professor, Health Policy and Management, Hillings School of Global Public Health, UNC Chapel Hill; Moderator: Alexandre “Sasha” White, PhD, Assistant Professor, History of the History of Medicine, and Associate Director, Center for Medical Humanities, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
This initial session considers the histories of race and racism in the field of epidemiology and how they persist in the present.
Check out the recording here.
Session 2 - Eugenics and Population Control: Racism and Reproduction in Public Health
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 4:00pm EST
Speakers: Phillipa Levine, PhD, Professor, Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas, Director, British, Irish and Empire Studies, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, and Jennifer James, PhD, MS, MSW, Assistant Professor, Institute for Health and Aging, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco; Moderator: Carolyn Sufrin, MD, PhD
Recording here.
Session 3 - Race, Racism, and Data Practices in Public Health
Friday, October 21, 2022 at 1:00pm EST
Location: Welch Medical Library, West Reading Room
Speakers: Melissa Creary, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health and Lundy Braun, PhD, Professor of Medical Science, Professor, Africana Studies, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Brown University; Moderator: Kim Gallon, PhD, MD, MLIS, Associate Professor, Africana Studies, Brown University
The definition and use of racial differences in the data practices of public health professionals has long been capricious at best and deterministic and dehumanizing at worst. In this event, moderated by Dr. Kim Gallon of the Department of History at Brown University, Dr. Lundy Braun, a pathologist and historian at the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Sciences and Africana Studies at Brown University and Dr. Melissa Creary, Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health will discuss how data sciences of race and health have been used in antiracist as well as racist modes since the late 19th century, and importance of understanding the intersection of race and data to build an inclusive and equitable practice of public health for the future.
(Please note, this session is also apart of the Achieving Health Equity in a World of Data Conference and attendees are welcome to attend the entire conference or just sessions of interest.)
Recording here. (Please note, this was also apart of the conference "Achieving Health Equity in a World of Data," which appears as the title of the recording).