On April 28, 2021 Dr. Jennifer D. Roberts and Dr. Gail C. Christopher joined us as guest speakers to discuss structural racism at the intersections of #BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19, health equity, and nature.
Jennifer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD; 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. Jennifer presented “The Health of the Country Depends Upon the Health of Negroes: Nature of Pandemics and Protests in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”
Gail is an award-winning social change agent with expertise in the social determinants of health and well-being and in related public policies. She is known for her pioneering work to infuse holistic health and diversity concepts into public sector programs and policy discourse. In her role as the Senior Advisor and Vice President at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), she was the driving force behind the America Healing initiative and the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation effort. She also served as Kellogg’s Vice President for Program. In 2015 she received the Terrance Keenan Award from Grantmakers in Health. She chairs the Board of the Trust for America’s Health. In 2019, she Christopher became the Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity (NCHE).
Gail spoke on achieving equity through getting rid of the fallacy people have in the belief in the hierarchy of human value and on the modern structures of racial healing as outlined in the TRHT model.
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