Health Equity in the Face of Change: Tools for a National Campaign Against Racism (On-demand webinar)

Note: This is a recording of a webinar held on May 22, 2017.

Training Overview
This webinar will inspire participants to strategize to act on three dimensions of health intervention, three levels of racism, and three principles for achieving health equity.

Dr. Camara Jones presents a Cliff Analogy for understanding three dimensions of health intervention: providing health services, addressing the social determinants of health (including poverty and neighborhood conditions), and addressing the social determinants of equity (including racism and other systems of structured inequity). She then turns her focus to a discussion of racism as a social determinant of equity and a root cause of”racial/ethnic differences in health outcomes. She defines racism as”a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (which is what we call ‘race’), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.” She identifies three levels of racism (institutionalized, personally-mediated, and internalized) and illustrates these three levels with her Gardener’s Tale allegory. She then generalizes her discussion of racism to encompass other systems of structured inequity.

Dr. Jones defines health equity as “assurance of the conditions for optimal health for all people, identifies three principles for achieving health equity, and gives examples of how those principles can be operationalized. She closes with two additional allegories to equip attendees to name racism and other systems of structured inequity, ask “How is racism operating here?, and organize and strategize to act.

The course contains two modules: a content module and a resources and evaluation module. After accessing both modules, learners will earn a certificate of completion. When the certificate is available, learners will see a Certificate button on their dashboard.

This recording is approximately 90 minutes. There are no prerequisites. Participants will need a broadband internet connection (Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred browsers) and computer speakers. For technical support, please contact emoryphtc@emory.edu.

About the Trainer
Camara Jones, MD, MPH, PhD

Dr. Jones is a Senior Fellow at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute and Cardiovascular Research Institute, Morehouse School of Medicine. She is a family physician and epidemiologist focusing on the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation.  She seeks to broaden the national health debate to include not only universal access to high quality health care, but also the social determinants of health (including poverty) and the social determinants of equity (including racism).
Dr. Jones’ allegories on "race" and racism illuminate topics otherwise difficult for many to understand or discuss.  She aims to catalyze a national conversation on racism to mobilize and engage all Americans in a National Campaign Against Racism. She was Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health (1994-2000), and Medical Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000-14).

This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number UB6HP31680, Public Health Training Centers for $4,348,992. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.