Event Date
Redefining Health and Wellness: Community-Centered Approaches to Resisting Racism, Sexism, and Transphobia in Medicine
Please join the Office of Academic Diversity (OAD) and three of our CAMPOS and CAMPSSAH Faculty Scholars as they discuss their work and the intersections of their research across three public health disciplines.
Thursday, April 20
3:10 - 4:30pm
Zoom only (download .ics and Zoom link)
The colloquium will include short presentations from each of the speakers, a panel discussion among speakers moderated by CAMPSSAH Director Zoila Mendoza and an informal discussion.
Chris Hanssmann (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies)
Epidemiological Biographies: Activist Reconsiderations of Trans and Travesti Health
This presentation will discuss several community-based investigations conducted in the last two decades in Argentina and the United States that radically reframed conventional epidemiological approaches to understanding and intervening in trans health. These small-scale studies, which I call “epidemiological biographies”, blended narrative and quantitative data to reject the prevailing “health behavior” models that dominated trans health research. Instead, they suggested that criminalization, racialized transphobia, state violence, and immiseration were the primary conditions endangering health and life expectancy in trans and travesti communities. I explain how Buenos Aires- and New York City-based activists mobilized these publications to shift dynamics within public health research and broader political domains. Although activist accounts are frequently portrayed as overly subjective or unscientific, epidemiological biographies took empiricism seriously to highlight what health care providers and researchers were missing in their collective understanding of the needs of trans and travesti communities.
Tiffani Johnson (Emergency Medicine)
Tiffani Johnson’s research portfolio reflects her commitment to improving the quality of care for underserved children. Her interdisciplinary research program is focused on race and racism and its impact on child health. She is currently exploring root causes of inequities in the healthcare and early childhood education settings, including research on racism and bias and its impact on the health and well-being of children.
Adeola Oni-Orisan (Family and Community Medicine)
Community-Centered Approaches to Birth Equity
High health care spending has not translated into better birth outcomes for Black birthing people in the United States. Structural racism continues to contribute to significant disparities in pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity. How are communities mobilizing and building power to create anti-racist spaces of care for Black birthing people and their families? What barriers do they face? What role, if any, should large research institutions play in this work? This talk will focus on the innovative work of Black birthworkers and Black women-led organization in advancing birth equity.