Outside The Margins

Part 1 (Recording)
To improve individual health and build healthy communities, health care providers need to recognize and address the unique culture, language and health literacy of diverse consumers and communities. In this first of a two-part conversation, Outside the Margins returns to explore how culture and language impact patient care. This foundational conversation will define culture and health literacy and begin to explore how effective health communication is as important to health care as clinical skill.

Part 2 (Recording)
From e-cigarettes and diet fads, to COVID-19 and vaccines, health misinformation can have profound impacts. In part two of this Outside the Margins webinar, we’ll bring together a panel of healthcare providers and researchers to further explore the impacts of health literacy, opportunities to empower patients and providers, and what resources for education are available.

Recording
Vaccine hesitancy, the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines, is influenced by a wide range of concerns. For many racially marginalized groups, especially Black communities, this hesitancy or mistrust is rooted in America’s history of medical experimentation and racism and ongoing treatment bias, barriers to testing, and economic and social inequalities.  Join our panel of experts as we unpack the concerns that inform vaccine mistrust and the COVID-19 vaccine, in particular.

Recording
Research has repeatedly shown that race is not a scientifically valid concept. Hair texture, skin color, and other physical features, the ones that make up our understanding of race, are only a few of the thousands of traits that define humanity as a species. However, across history, dubious science has been used to justify racism and oppression. However, for better or worse, race continues to be used across science and research to measure real impacts on groups, but also to justify difference and inequality. Outside the Margins kicks off 2022 with a expert, interdisciplinary panel to examine the resilience  and impacts of “race science.” 

Research shows that sexual and gender minorities experience greater health disparities compared to heterosexual and cisgender populations. These health disparities are consequences of discrimination, bias and stigma, and systemic, interpersonal and intrapersonal oppression. Similar disparities in health coverage, chronic health conditions, mental health, and mortality also exist for racial and ethnic minorities. For queer and trans people of color (QTPOC), these disparities, underlying health conditions, and lack of support leave them especially susceptible to COVID-19. Join our expert panel as we discuss specific impacts to QTPOC, resources across the Commonwealth, and opportunities to better train and prepare health care professionals.

COVID-19 has disrupted our very way of life. Declared a global pandemic in March of 2020, the novel coronavirus has taken numerous lives and upheaved societies and economies across the world. In response, science, government, and health care mobilized in an unparalleled manner. The pandemic and the response also highlighted the already existing gaps that left the most vulnerable at even more risk.

America has a long history of anti-Asian racism, but, as a result of rhetoric around the pandemic, hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have increased. Join a panel of faculty, staff, and students as they explore how to support the AAPI community in the midst of this current crisis.