As global health professionals, we have a professional imperative to end systemic racism and promote justice in all the places we work and live. The attempted murder of Jacob Blake; the subsequent murders of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Breonna Taylor; and the many others who are denied justice on a daily basis are painful reminders of how little progress has been made in the United States. The disproportionate loss of even more Black lives to COVID-19 is yet another marker of the deadly impact of racism.
Ky-Shana Urie
Make no mistake—the structural racism we continue to see in America has a direct connection to the global health challenges we face abroad as well. Systemic racism is a clear global health crisis, and as global health practitioners and researchers, we have a duty to respond.
Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, the Arnhold Institute for Global Health (AIGH) has engaged in an ongoing internal dialogue about race, participated in the “Chats for Change” series, hosted Rhea Boyd, MD, MPH, as a guest for our webinar series, “What Must We Do Now,” which focused on police brutality as a public health threat, and observed Juneteenth.
Madeleine Ballard
The Institute participated in both the #ShutDownSTEM protests and Scholar’s Strike for Racial Justice in June and September of 2020. Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, Chair of Mount Sinai’s Department of Global Health and the Arnhold Institute, is participating in Mount Sinai’s Task Force on Racism. This task force released its institutional roadmap in June 2021. At Mount Sinai, our Department and Institute have launched the decolonizing global health series in partnership with the Department of Medical Education, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and the Women’s Global Health Department. We have also co-led a series with Nepal Rising, Ohio State University College of Social Work, and NYC H+H/Elmhurst Hospital on COVID-19 vaccine apartheid.
In order to ensure the Department and Institute honors its commitment to combat structural racism and promote justice in our global health programs in a proactive, inclusive and transparent way, a Department-wide joint staff and faculty Task Force on Racial Justice and Equity was appointed by Dr. Vreeman, in September 2020. Our Department leadership gave the Task Force a broad mandate to review the current state of our Department and develop recommendations to strengthen our current policies and practice along with a plan of action we began implementing in January 2021.
Over the two years, the Anti-Racism Task force facilitated a participatory process by which the Department identified departmental-level problems stemming from anti-black racism; key strategies and interventions to tackle those problems; and targets for tracking progress. We have collectively identified five key areas for improvement and reckoning.
Dismantle racist incentives. Our Department identified that our evaluation rubrics incentivize, for example:
- Not “sharing the mic” (i.e. guarding authorship).
- Not committing energy to ‘non-evaluated’ efforts like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
- Focusing on journal publications, rather than other forms of knowledge, (iv) not engaging research “participants” as “co-creators”.
- Not sharing financial resources with our international partners.
We aim to dismantle racist incentives by, for example
- Counting DEI: Require all department members to have one annual review goal related to DEI (e.g. DEI-related service, engagement in learning activities etc.).
- Sharing the mic: require all research studies to have robust dissemination plans, which includes lay materials/press and community engagement with accessibly presented results.
Increase the number of Black leaders and Black faculty within the Department. We aim to do this by, for example
- Hiring fairer: increasing diversity of faculty and staff applicant pools and those hiring.
- Compensating fairer: addressing transparency in both staff and faculty salary tiers and structures during both pre- and post-recruitment.
- Increase diversity now: proactively recruit BIPOC secondary and adjunct faculty from partner organizations and internally to the Department and support their meaningful engagement with AIGH.
Improve knowledge and understanding of Black culture. Without burdening our Black colleagues with the emotional baggage of having to “educate” the rest of the Department, we want to create a work culture where all members are equipped with the tools and resources to better educate themselves about Black culture(s) and the history of racism in the United States. We also recognize that the work toward becoming a truly anti-racist department is both individual as well as collective. Therefore, everyone who wishes to participate in the process of becoming anti-racist, must proactively initiate personal steps to do so without the reliance on any one or group of individuals within the department to teach or provide information around this topic. The effort to participate in collaborative efforts to become an anti-racist department, must also be an individually initiated effort. We will work towards this goal by
- Facilitating racial healing: confront racial bias, reckon with systemic racism and engage in collective awareness generation and healing.
- Learn about Black culture: engage in this learning with colleagues, at work, together.
Cultivate humility in relation to research participants or recipients of care, most of whom are Black or people of color. We aim to work towards this, for example
- Partnering with communities: improve community engagement in research from an anti-racist perspective.
- Equipping trainees: better preparing faculty and students with whom we work to be antiracist actors.
- Ecolonizing global health: engaging deeply in the decolonize global health movement.
Improve communication. We are working towards this, by, for example
- Creating a welcoming, open, and accountable workplace. Developing a plan to instill and support interpersonal accountability and positive communication in the workplace.
- Strengthening incident reporting. Reviewing, educating, and working to cultivate trust in the incident reporting policy and practice at Mount Sinai Health System and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- Preparing all our students, faculty, and staff to be stewards of anti-racist values in our practice, communications, and collaborations and seek to remove racism, discrimination, inequity, and bias in our individual and collective voices.
The implementation of these five initiatives are being led by the Departmental nine-member anti-racism task force. Each initiative has an accompanying working group where both staff and faculty members take part.
For more information, email arnholdinstitute@mssm.edu
Ky-Shana Urie and Madeleine Ballard are Co-Chairs of the Anti-Racism Task Force