The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Monthly Journal
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Letter from the Office
My name is Janae Hubbard, and I am the new FSPH Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Program Manager. Under typical circumstances, I’d be meeting you at an event, or during office hours in the EDI Office. I look forward to the day when we can share a coffee or a conversation, but until then, I’m grateful to be able to connect through this newsletter.
Even in these turbulent times, I am both hopeful and optimistic about our future. I have witnessed over the last several weeks a collective consciousness about and understanding of the long-lasting impact that this virus will have on underrepresented, under-resourced, and undocumented members of our global community—as well as the importance of their contributions. It’s not just the mere recognition of the disparities that exist in our world, but also the actions we’re seeing—people are engaging in beautiful acts of kindness, taking care of each other, sharing their talents with the world, and taking steps to make changes that will extend far beyond this moment. I hope—and believe—that we will be able to sustain the current momentum, and that’s pretty exciting.
As a leading public health institution, we are addressing health disparities and leading the charge to usher in new programs, initiatives, and policies to end health injustices locally and globally—today and tomorrow.
It is our hope that the newsletter will provide you with sources of new knowledge and skills and place to gain resources, build awareness and share your insight, passion, and work—all through a social justice lens. Look for a new missive every month, as well as corresponding zoom meet-ups.
With that in mind, let’s jump into our first edition! You’ll find resources, readings, and trainings—each of which can be accessed from the comfort of your couch.
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Knowledge Building: Resources, Readings, and Trainings
Oh My!
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The following websites are sources of ongoing insight on the inequities not only in health, but also in society at large. They are relevant in the current climate and beyond.
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Racial Equity Tools is a website designed to support individuals and groups working to achieve racial equity personally and professionally. Their site offers tools, research, tips, curricula, and ideas for people who want to increase their own understanding of racial equity and to help those working toward justice at every level—in systems, organizations, communities, and the culture at large.
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“There is ample evidence that social factors, including education, employment status, income level, gender, and ethnicity have a marked influence on how healthy a person is. In all countries—whether low-, middle- or high-income—there are wide disparities in the health status of different social groups. The lower an individual’s socio-economic position, the higher their risk of poor health.”
– The World Health Organization
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Many of us are finding we have a little extra time to read these days. The following pieces highlight how COVID-19 is exposing the current stratified system of have- and have-nots in America.
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"What We Know About the COVID-19 Race Gap"
By now it’s clear that the novel coronavirus is no “great equalizer.” Not everyone has work they can do from home or a vacation house to retreat to—let alone paid sick leave. These economic divides became obvious early in the pandemic’s spread, as states issued their stay-at-home orders.
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FSPH Spotlight
Each month, we’ll be spotlighting a member of our community who is doing the work to improve equity in public health.
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Dr. Brookmeyer
Dean, Fielding School of Public Health
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“Sometimes, we have to take different routes and pathways to disseminate information...”
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We all get into public health in different ways—it’s not a straight line. I want to affirm that it’s okay not to know where you’re going to end up. I thought I’d be an engineer or an architect, but ultimately, I wanted to have more of a direct impact on people. So, I decided to use my technical skills to do that. I thought about how I could apply my skills to help people. That led me to biostatistics.
My graduate work had been on how long people survived cancer—it was an esoteric field called survival analysis. But I wanted to have a broader population-level impact, ideally before people got sick.
When I finished my graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison, I started my first academic job at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The year was 1981. The first AIDS cases had just been identified. Immediately upon my arrival, I began studying the incubation period of HIV infection.
I started applying the methods I had learned in graduate school to a situation akin to what we’re facing now: a public health emergency. I got used to working in real time.
I knew how many AIDS cases we were aware of and what the incubation period was. With that information, I developed a model to determine how many people were actually infected.
I also became involved in a longitudinal study called the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study. This was a four-city study of gay men. As part of that study, we formed a community advisory board. I remember going to those first meetings, comprising community representatives as well as participants in the study. There were men who had volunteered to be in the study, many of whom didn’t know they were positive. In fact, back then we didn’t even have an HIV test. They just knew their friends were getting sick; they weren’t, but they feared the same outcome.
I recognized then that behavior was a key part of how you could control the epidemic and keep people safe. Shortly afterward, I was involved in another study looking at drug use and HIV. It was a needle exchange program: a very controversial intervention.
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But the goal was to keep people healthy and safe, and that program made a difference. It had an impact.
In 1986, I published a paper that sounded the alarm about what we could expect in terms of the forecast for HIV/AIDS in the
Lancet
, a leading British medical journal, stating that what we were seeing was just the tip of the iceberg—that there were people silently transmitting the infection. I made estimates about how many people were actually infected and how many AIDS cases we’d see in the future. Before that, no one really knew how big this was going to be. The paper served as a call to arms.
There are so many parallels to the current circumstances. When we looked at how AIDS was spread, we realized it was about behavior—not just test tubes. We see that now with physical distancing:
How do we change our behaviors to mitigate risk?
And once again, we find ourselves working in real time against the clock—we can’t wait for things to be published in scholarly journals. Sometimes, we have to take different routes and pathways to disseminate information outside the realm of academia. That awareness was infused in me back in 1981, when nobody knew what was happening, and it’s just as important today. For example, I had a piece published recently on where the pandemic is headed, not in an academic journal but in the
LA Times
.
When you have a new public health challenge like coronavirus, or like HIV/AIDS back in the eighties, you have the opportunity to do something different—to identify your special way of contributing. We all come to public health from different fields and we all have something to contribute. We all have a unique strength to identify.
My advice to you? Chart your own way. Look at your own strengths and how you can make a difference. You don’t have to follow someone else’s path; you can own your own. Be true to yourself—you want to make the world healthier, make it better, and make that difference. Your unique talents will help you accomplish that goal.
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We’d love your suggestions on who you’d like to see featured in the newsletter, including professors, staff, classmates, alumni, and community members. We look forward to collaborating with you to share the great minds who are transforming public health locally and globally. Submit Spotlight submissions
here
.
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Consider taking the following free online training opportunities. Both are available now, with the click of a button.
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The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at The Ohio State University is committed to the creation of a just and inclusive society, where all people and communities have an opportunity to succeed. They address the barriers that prevent access to opportunity in our society, such as implicit bias and racial disparities in our education system.
These modules will introduce you to insights about how our minds operate and help you to understand the origins of implicit associations. You will also uncover some of your own biases and learn strategies to address them. Each module is divided into a short series of lessons, with many taking less than ten minutes to complete, so you can complete them at your convenience.
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The Mayo Clinic offers a series of very helpful short videos on how to manage anxiety and increase mindfulness during COVID-19.
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