Spring 2023 CEMHD Newsletter
CEMHD Hosts Two Dynamic Speakers in Series on Race and Health
In February and March, the CEMHD presented two noted authorities on health equity research as the latest events in its contributions to the Race and Health speaker series co-sponsored by CEMHD, the Office of the President, and the Division for Research and Economic Development.
These two talks were also supported by University Auxiliary Services and open to the public.
Dr. Jennifer D. Roberts and Dr. Dána-Ain Davis gave powerful presentations enthusiastically received by audiences of over 100 people including members of the University community as well as participants from New York State’s Capital Region and beyond.
Dr. Jennifer D. Roberts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD).
Dr. Roberts is also the Founder and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory as well as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of NatureRx@UMD, an initiative that emphasizes the green space benefits interspersed throughout and around the UMD campus and acknowledges the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People as well as the historical slave trade legacies of the UMD campus land.
In recognition of her NatureRx@UMD accomplishments, Dr. Roberts was awarded an REI Cooperative Action Fund to create and establish the Wekesa Earth Center, a collaborative effort of scholarship and recognition across multiple disciplines to promote equity, reconciliation, and healing in nature.
Her scholarship focuses on the impact of built, social, and natural environments, including the institutional and structural inequities of these environments, on the public health outcomes of marginalized communities.
Dr. Roberts’ talk entitled “I Can’t Breathe”: Environmental Racism in the United States” explored the historical and contemporary inequities that stem from structural racism within the United States through an examination of built, social and natural environments.
More specifically, much of her research has explored the dynamic relationship between environmental, social, and cultural determinants of physical activity and using empirical evidence of this relationship to infer complex health outcome patterns and disparities among adults and children.
Disparities related to these environments as well as health outcomes, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, were also discussed.
Her research suggests that structural racism and inequities led to severe disparities in initial COVID-19 effects among highly populated Black communities. See a full recording of Dr. Roberts’ presentation.
Dr. Dána-Ain Davis is Professor of Urban Studies and Anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY) and on the faculty of the PhD Program in Critical Psychology.
She is the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Dr. Davis’s research focuses on medical racism, reproduction, and the technologies that assist in reproduction. She served on the New York State Governor’s Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Disparate Racial Outcomes and currently serves on the Birth Equity Collaborative in San Francisco.
She is the author of “Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth” (NYU Press 2019) which received the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology, and The Senior Book Prize from the Association of Feminist Anthropology.
In Reproductive Injustice, Dr. Davis examines medical racism in the lives of professional Black women who have given birth prematurely.
Her talk, titled “Traumatic Repercussions: Black Women and Obstetric Racism” discussed how race confounds the perception that class is the root of adverse birth outcomes and the role that birth workers — midwives, doulas, and birth advocates — play in addressing Black women’s birth outcomes.
Drawing on an impressive array of interviews with nearly fifty mothers, fathers, neonatologists, nurses, midwives, and reproductive justice advocates, Dr. Davis argues that events leading up to an infant’s arrival, and the parents’ experiences, reveal subtle but pernicious forms of racism that confound the perceived class dynamics that are frequently understood to be a central factor of adverse birth effects.
Dr. Davis defines obstetric racism as a set of “beliefs and practices levelled against the reproducing Black body that sit at the intersection of obstetric violence and medical racism. It is the mechanism and practice of subordination to which Black women and people's reproduction are subjected that track along the histories of anti-black racism based on ideas of difference that have been worked out through a hierarchy of humanity as a remnant of the afterlife of racial science (Davis, 2018).”
Learn more about Dr. Davis and her research.
Fast Facts: Obstetric Outcomes for African American Women
African American are disproportionately burdened with increased morbidity and mortality in obstetric outcomes:
- Pregnancy-related mortality rates among African American women are over three times higher compared to the rate for White women.
- Infants born to African Americans have markedly higher mortality rates than those born to White women.
- Maternal death rates increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and racial disparities widened for African American women.
Both race and ethnicity– and place-based inequities require inclusive practices to address the social factors that contribute to the persistent maternal mortality rates.
Policy initiatives should be implemented for improving maternal health by combatting structural racism associated with residential segregation.
Sources:
- National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality (CDC)
- Maternal Health: Outcomes Worsened and Disparities Persisted During the Pandemic (U.S. Government Accountability Office)
Related articles:
- Associations Between Historically Redlined Districts and Racial Disparities in Current Obstetric Outcomes (JAMA Network Open)
- Analysis of Residential Segregation and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Severe Maternal Morbidity Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (JAMA Network Open)
Where are the Fellows now?
Dr. Kaydian Reid — the Fellowship Program’s first graduate — defended her DrPH dissertation in 2019 at the School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy, and Management.
Currently, Dr. Reid is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Public Health Programs at the University of St. Joseph.
Her research explores minority health disparities and adolescent sexual and reproductive health, especially among Caribbean Black adolescents.
Dr. Melissa Noel, a 2020 graduate of the Health Disparities Fellowship program from the School of Criminal Justice, is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Temple University in the Criminal Justice Department.
Previously, Dr. Noel was a postdoctoral fellow at American University’s Dept. of Justice, Law and Criminology.
Dr. Wayne Lawrence was a 2020 graduate of the Health Disparities Fellowship program from the School of Public Health and currently a Cancer Prevention Fellow at NIH.
Dr. Lawrence was recently elected to the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Associate Member Council, which develops programs that address the needs of early-career scientists and advises leadership on issues of concern to the next generation of cancer researchers.
Dr. Hnin Wai Lwin Myo successfully defended her dissertation in December 2022 and received her DrPH from the School of Public Health.
Dr. Myo is currently working for the Cancer Services Program, Bureau of Chronic Disease Evaluation and Research, New York State Department of Health, as a Program Research Specialist.
Dr. Myo also serves as President of the Myanmar Multiethnic Sociocultural Association for the Capital Region, NY.
In May 2022, Dr. Simone Seward successfully defended her DrPH dissertation at the School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy, and Management.
Dr. Seward has accepted a position as the Director of Health Equity Research and Programs at SUNY Upstate Medical University.
Dr. Yajaira Cabrera-Tineo successfully defended her dissertation to fulfill her Ph.D. requirements in Counseling Psychology from the School of Education’s Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology in May 2022.
Dr. Cabrera-Tineo has commenced a two-year clinical post-doc focusing on trauma therapy at Beacon Therapy Group and is continuing her research.
In August 2022, Dr. Katheryn Roberson successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in Counseling Psychology.
Dr. Roberson accepted a post-doc under Dr. Sidney Hankerson, the Vice Chair for Community Engagement in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of Mental Health Equity Research at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Her research focuses on reducing racial / ethnic disparities in mental health.
Save The Date! April 21, 2023: President’s Forum On Health Disparities, Community Engagement in the Achievement of Health Equity
The President’s Forum on Health Disparities is a signature event supported by UAlbany’s prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) S21 Award, entitled “The Endowment for Community-Based Health Disparities Research and Training.”
This annual event is intended to promote research on health disparities, foster engagement and collaboration, and contribute to the achievement of health equity.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable
Community Engaged Research: Pathway to Reducing Disparities
Dr. Pérez-Stable is the Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), the lead organization at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for planning, coordinating and evaluating minority health and health disparities research.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Pérez-Stable has positioned NIMHD at the forefront of the research response to COVID-19 health disparities by co-chairing NIH-wide research programs and collaborations with underserved and vulnerable communities.
One such program — established to promote health equity by reducing COVID-19 associated morbidity and mortality disparities — was the Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) Against COVID-19 Disparities, which provided science-based information through active community engagement outreach with the goal of building long-lasting partnerships as well as improving diversity and inclusion in NIH’s response to COVID-19.