The U-M School of Public Health, MSHIELD, RacismLab, the U-M College of Pharmacy, the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation and the Office of the Vice President for Research and the NCID's Anti-Racism Collaborative are proud to present a daylong symposium on equity, anti-racism and the health sciences on April 2, 2024.
The symposium is based on the work of two international thought leaders in anti-racism and health—Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones and Dr. Chandra Ford. These two groundbreaking scholars will join the symposium for a keynote conversation—marking the first-ever public conversation between them. The symposium will also feature interactive sessions on anti-racism in healthcare and anti-racism health research. Additional information about the sessions along with registration information is included below.
Tuesday, April 2, 2024, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Palmer Commons Great Lakes Room
All sessions will take place in the Palmer Commons Great Lakes Room (4th Floor). The keynote Conversation will also be available via livestream. More information can be found on the registration page.
10:00 - 11:30 am: Reimagining Healthcare Institutions: Creating an Anti-Racist Agenda to Advance Health Equity
Interactive Session hosted by MSHIELD
Color-evasive solutions have failed to achieve racial equity in healthcare. We need real institutional accountability. This session will include an orienting discussion about an anti-racist agenda for healthcare followed by a panel of clinical, academic, and community speakers. Afterward, attendees will engage in small-group discussions to brainstorm strategies and develop concrete action steps to start creating an anti-racist agenda for healthcare.
1:00 - 2:30 pm: Keynote Conversation
The keynote session will be a conversation between Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones and Dr. Chandra Ford. Both known for anti-racism scholarship and advocacy, these two luminaries will help the audience consider how we move past the action of naming racism as a public health issue and towards substantive action and change in our institutions.
Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones is a family physician and epidemiologist whose work focuses on naming, measuring, and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation. Dr. Jones serves as a Commissioner on the O'Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health, and is a past president of the American Public Health Association, a senior fellow at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and an adjunct professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Dr. Chandra Ford is Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and the Department of African American Studies and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health. Dr. Ford created (with Collins Airhihenbuwa) the Public Health Critical Race Praxis, a framework for applying Critical Race Theory to public health research. This event will be live streamed.
3:00 - 4:30 pm: Charting a Critical Course for the Study of Racial Health Inequities
Interactive Session hosted by RacismLab
This “fireside” discussion will bring together scholars, including Ryan Petteway and Monica McLemore, to speak on two major issues in the public health literature on racial health inequities that challenge our ability as a field to maintain an evidence base to support change: (a) health equity tourism; and (b) conventional public health research on race that is reductionist, simplistic, and poorly theorized. After the moderated discussion, audience members will work in small facilitated groups, to reimagine academic research that reflects the importance of racial health inequities to public health.
This event is sponsored by the following campus partners
