When we talk about public health policy, it’s critical to also discuss health disparities. Health disparities refer to differences in health outcomes between racial or ethnic groups, socioeconomic groups, or other groups, including groups identified by gender, sexual orientation, or disability status.
Health disparities related to race are well-documented in the United States, and there are numerous incidents where African Americans, in particular, have experienced racist treatment by the healthcare system. J. Marion Sims, the founder of gynecology, experimented on enslaved women (1), textbooks asserted that Black people could feel less pain (2), and Black men were lied to about receiving treatment, leading them to die of curable illnesses (3). Today, Black women are more likely to die in childbirth than white women (4), and elderly Black Americans are less likely to be insured than their white counterparts (5).
Thankfully, there are multiple groups working to combat health disparities in African American populations. These groups, often led by members of these communities themselves, cover a variety of health topics but all work to bridge the gap in healthcare. Below is a sampling of organizations working to tackle this system-wide problem. While this list is only a small sample of groups approaching this issue, it is a glimpse into initiatives to eliminate health disparities and how we can identify problems we have yet to solve.
Black Women’s Health Imperative: Founded in 1983 by Byllye Y. Avery, the Black Women’s Health Imperative is the oldest national organization working to improve the health of Black women and girls. The organization has programs that tackle prediabetes/diabetes awareness, reproductive health, HIV awareness, and much more. This organization even has a comic series, Luna Unleashed.
The Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues (SAAPHI): SAAPHI is a nonprofit that works to improve the health of African Americans. To do this, they work to research the causes and issues that impact African American communities, advocate for policy changes to address these health disparities, provide webinars on community issues, and organize mentorship programs.
Restoring Our Own Through Transformation (ROOTT): This organization is led by Black women to address reproductive and birthing justice. The organization has programs focused on providing training for doulas and peer-to-peer reproductive education for young adults. For those interested in learning more about the mission of ROOTT, their founder, Jessica M. Roach, has a Ted Talk where she speaks about her organization and its mission.
Black AIDS Institute: Founded in 1999, the Black AIDS Institute seeks to inform Black Americans about HIV prevention and care. The organization works on both providing care and education to those with or at risk of HIV, but also training staff and medical professionals in providing these services.
National Black Leadership Commission on Health: This organization seeks to reduce disparities for Black communities and work toward health equity. They offer a variety of educational programs and workshops for medical professionals, including ones on mental health.
Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM): Health isn’t just physical; mental and emotional health are important, too. When addressing disparities, it’s important to address disparities in this sector as well. BEAM works to help Black and other marginalized communities access mental and emotional health care.
For more resources regarding antiracism in healthcare, check out the Himmelfarb libguide on the topic.
1. Brown DL. Critics say 'father of gynecology' deserves scorn, not a statue. The Washington Post. 2017.
2. Trawalter S, Hoffman KM, Waytz A. Racial bias in perceptions of others' pain. PloS one. 2012;7(11):e48546. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0048546.
3. Heller J. 50 years ago, AP exposed Tuskegee syphilis study details. The Philadelphia tribune (1884). 2022:4A.
4. Oribhabor GI, Nelson ML, Buchanan-Peart K, Cancarevic I. A mother's cry: A race to eliminate the influence of racial disparities on maternal morbidity and mortality rates among Black women in America. Curēus (Palo Alto, CA). 2020;12(7):e9207. doi: 10.7759/cureus.9207.
5. Stewart KA, London AS. Falling Through the Cracks: Lack of Health Insurance Among Elderly Foreign- and Native-Born Blacks. Journal of immigrant and minority health. 2015;17(5):1391-1400. doi:10.1007/s10903-014-0099-3
6. Society for the analysis of Sfrican Smerican Public Health Issues. SAAPHI Web site. https://www.saaphi.org/home. Accessed 2/25, 2025.
7. Restoring our own through transformation. ROOTT Web site. https://www.roottrj.org/. Accessed 2/25, 2025.
Louis Wade Sullivan at Spotlight Health Aspen Ideas Festival 2015. Creative Commons image.
The Rotation is proud to continue our observance of Black History Month with a look at the life of Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, MD, the founding Dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, and the second African American appointed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Louis Wade Sullivan was born in 1933 in the rural town of Blakely, Georgia. From an early age, Wade knew he wanted to be a doctor thanks to the influence of Dr. Joseph Griffin, the only Black doctor in the region. According to Sullivan’s memoir, Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine (available in print and e-book at Himmelfarb Library):
...neither Blakley nor any of its surrounding towns had a black doctor or a black hospital. If you were sick enough that you needed medical attention, you could do without and let nature take its course, you could go to one of the local root doctors, … or you could go to the white doctor, but that meant going around back and sitting in a separate waiting room, which people considered demeaning. It meant you were acquiescing to the so-called universal presumption of black inferiority. That was a constant black people had to put up with in Blakely, as they did all over the South, but they didn’t like it.
The other option was that you could go to Dr. Griffin, who treated patients at his twenty-five-bed hospital in Bainbridge. Having Dr. Griffin take care of you was more in keeping with your dignity. It was also something of a statement of independence, tinged with defiance. It meant that there were some things at least, that you would not put up with if you could help it (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014).
Sullivan’s father was the town of Blakely’s only African American mortician, and often used his hearse as an ambulance to transport black patients who did not have other means of transportation to Dr. Griffin’s hospital to receive the medical care they needed (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014). Sullivan recalls being “completely taken by how a doctor could help very ill people get better. … I wanted to be exactly like Dr. Griffin” (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014).
Sullivan studied pre-med at Morehouse College (Harvard College, 2020). He graduated from Morehouse in 1954 - the same year as the historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that declared school segregation unconstitutional (Talesnik, 2016). He then started medical school at Boston University School of Medicine, where he was the only African American student in his class, and only one of three African American students in the medical school (Talesnik, 2016). He graduated third in his medical school class in 1958 (Harvard College, 2020).
He completed his medical training at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where he was the first Black intern at the institution (Talesnik, 2016). During his time at Cornell Medical Center, Sullivan completed a fellowship in hematology. He followed that up with a pathology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and a hematology fellowship at Harvard’s Thorndike Laboratory at Boston City Hospital (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014). One of his most notable research studies looked at the correlation between alcoholism and its impact on the human-blood-forming system (Rees & Labosier, 2023). In 1966, Sullivan became the co-director of Hematology at Boston University Medical Center, in 1967, he founded Boston University Hematology Service at Boston City Hospital and directed the Boston Sickle Cell Center (Rees & Labosier, 2023).
In the mid-1970s, Sullivan returned to Morehouse to help establish and serve as the founding dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine (Harvard College, 2020). The Morehouse School of Medicine became “the only four-year medical school organized for black students in the 20th century, joining Howard University School of Medicine and Meharry Medical College, which had been founded in the 19th century” (Talesnik, 2016). In 1976, Sullivan partnered with Dr. Walter Bowie, and Anthony Rachal to found the Association on Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) to promote a national minority health agenda and “quantifying the health status and health personnel needs of the minority community” (Association of Minority Health Professions Schools, n.d.).
In 1989, Sullivan was appointed as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) by President George H.W. Bush becoming only the second African American to serve in this position (Harvard College, 2020). During his time as Secretary of HHS, Sullivan spearheaded the creation of the NIH Office of Minority Health, which is now the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), as well as the appointment of Dr. Bernadine Healy as the first female director of the NIH, Dr. Antonia Novello as the first female and Hispanic surgeon general, and the first female HHS chief of staff (Talesnik, 2016). One key accomplishment of Sullivan’s time as Secretary of HHS was getting new standardized nutrition labels on packaged foods to help Americans make healthier choices, which received pushback from the FDA and the Department of Agriculture over concerns of potential harm to the dairy and cattle industries (Talesnik, 2016). Sullivan stated that grocery stores have “become a Tower of Babel and consumers need to be linguists, scientists, and mind readers to understand the many labels they see” before the new standardized food labels were adopted (Institute of Medicine US Committee on Examination of Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols, 2010).
When his term as Secretary of HHS ended, Sullivan returned to Morehouse School of Medicine to serve as two-time dean and president of the school (1980-1989 and 1993-2002) and was named President Emeritus in 2003 (Morehouse School of Medicine, 2025). Sullivan has served in numerous other leadership roles during his career including the Co-Chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS (2001-2006), Chairman of the President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2002-2009), and currently serves as Chairman and Founder of the Sullivan Alliance to Transform the Health Professions (Harvard College, 2020).
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Examination of Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols, Wartella, E. A., Lichtenstein, A. H., & Boon, C. S. (Eds.). (2010). Front-of-package nutrition rating systems and symbols: Phase I report. National Academies Press (US).
The Rotation is proud to kick off its observance of Black History Month by taking a look at the multitude of organizations in healthcare which represent African American professionals in the United States. Regardless of your professional affiliation, you will likely find an association to support you. Many of these organizations have long histories, while some were established more recently. Browse our list to discover an organization for you! And please feel free to use the comments section to add links to any African American healthcare organizations which haven’t been mentioned in this post.
For those training for careers as health services executives, there is the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE), founded in 1968 to promote the advancement and development of Black healthcare leaders, improve the quality of healthcare for minorities and the underserved, and ensure greater participation of minorities in healthcare.
Finally, the Black Healthcare and Medicine Association is an interdisciplinary organization that organizes educational events, workshops, and networking and recruiting opportunities for African Americans across the healthcare and life sciences industries.
As our brief overview makes clear, there are multiple opportunities for African Americans to become involved in professional healthcare associations. If you are currently a student, consider joining organizations now to take advantage of a student rate (where available). Professional organizations afford opportunities to find mentors, career opportunities, and fellowship – all of which are crucial during challenging times.
Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – all English-speaking countries – are the countries represented by the authors of this article. The incidents represented include the doxing and harassment of medical practitioners simply for being Jewish; a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by medical professionals, medical schools, and professional associations; the feeling among Jewish medical professionals that they must hide their identity to avoid workplace repercussions; and even demonstrations at healthcare facilities that have frightened staff and patients.
Key questions remain in the wake of these incidents, according to the authors. Gordon et al. seek to understand how the resurgence of antisemitism affects the Jewish community, which includes healthcare workers. They wonder when and how national healthcare authorities will step in with strategies aimed at combating the atmosphere of hatred affecting the workplace and its stakeholders, from practitioners to patients. Additionally, the authors question how the response might be different if this degree of hatred were aimed at other societal groups.
Hatred needs to be addressed at institutional levels, according to the authors. Gordon et al. list three suggestions for public policy: that a clear definition of antisemitism be established and widely disseminated across healthcare contexts, including workplaces and schools; that clear policies for conduct be communicated, as well as the consequences for violating the policy; and finally, that education on antisemitism be provided to leadership, faculty, staff, and students at healthcare institutions.
Medical professionals in the United States have responded to the resurgence of antisemitism in a concrete way with the establishment in the wake of October 7 of the American Jewish Medical Association, a new nonprofit organization established to represent Jewish physicians, fellows, residents, medical students, and public health and healthcare professionals. The AJMA has chapters across the U.S., and issues statements on current topics of concern. It also provides access to a form for medical workers to report cases of antisemitism, including violence or intimidation, hate speech, or institutional issues, among others. The AJMA also has a weekly podcast that looks at the intersection of healthcare and Jewish values.
Sadly, antisemitism did not begin with the Holocaust, nor did it end there. On this international day of remembrance, it is important to learn from the past by considering how you can help to chart a more inclusive future.
References
Gordon, M., Teitel, J., Rosenberg, T., Oratz, R., Katz, N., & Katz, D. (2024). Antisemitism in Medicine: An International Perspective. Rambam Maimonides medical journal, 10.5041/RMMJ.10536. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.5041/RMMJ.10536
Himmelfarb Library has honored Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with numerous blog posts, and as we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. again today, we wanted to take a look back at some of our previous posts. These posts can serve as an opportunity to reflect on Dr. King’s life and legacy, celebrate the progress made toward continuing Dr. King’s work, and recommit to the work that still needs to be done.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is well known for his passionate and thoughtful speeches that examined racial discrimination in the United States, the negative impacts of poverty, and the need for communities to rally behind and support vulnerable populations. His iconic “I Have a Dream” speech focused on education, access to housing, racial desegregation, and building an equitable country. Dr. King also fought to end racial inequities in healthcare.
On March 25, 1966, Dr. King spoke at a meeting of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. While the full transcript of this speech has not been discovered, fragments were printed in newspapers. This speech addressed the harsh realities that people of color, particularly Black Americans, faced in America and urged listeners to educate themselves on these inequities and work to dismantle systemic oppression. It was during a press conference documented by the Associated Press before this speech that Dr. King is thought to have spoken one of his most famous quotes about health according to Professor Charlene Galarneau:
“We are concerned about the constant use of federal funds to support this most notorious expression of segregation. Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death” (Galarneau, 2018, p.5).
Dr. King’s speech was a call to action encouraging people to educate themselves about the issues of racism and economic inequality and use this knowledge to establish and maintain inclusive communities. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. King’s speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights, read the full post!
If we are to take up Dr. King’s call to action and educate ourselves on the issues of racism and economic inequality, last year’s post about honoring King’s legacy through self-education can be a great place to start! This post highlights resources that can help you learn about these topics so you can put that knowledge into action!
To learn more about these resources, read the full post!
References: Galarneau, C. (2018). Getting King’s Words Right. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 29(1), 5–8. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2018.0001
Logo for IndigenousSIPIN intervention, shared with author permission from Haozous, E., Yeary, K., Maybee, W., Porter, C., Zoellner, J., John, B., Henry, W. A. E., & Haring, R. C. (2024). Indigenous knowledge and sugar sweetened beverages: Qualitative adaptations towards chronic disease prevention and intervention. Explore (New York, N.Y.), 20(6), 103066. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2024.103066
November is Native American Heritage Month. To observe it, The Rotation spoke with Dr. Emily A. Haozous, PhD, RN, FAAN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache).
Dr. Haozous is a nurse and research scientist with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation - Southwest Center, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Haozous conducts community-based and community-guided research and evaluation in collaboration with Native American partners, including urban tribal centers, reservation-based tribal organizations, and tribal governments. Her work is focused on issues of access to care, health equity, cancer and non-cancer pain management, cultural tailoring, and national trends in premature mortality. Dr. Haozous has a clinical background in oncology, hospice, and palliative care nursing. She is a breast cancer survivor and has co-facilitated a women’s cancer support group continuously since 2007. Dr. Haozous received her undergraduate degree in music from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MSN and PhD in nursing from Yale University. Most recently, she participated in the authorship of the National Academy of Medicine’s special publication, Systems’ Impact on Historically and Currently Marginalized Populations (expected publication date 2025).
The Rotation: Thanks for taking time to talk with me today. I wanted to speak about your most recent publication, and discuss some concepts related to research and Native populations that it introduced me to. I noticed quite a few co-authors on this paper.
EH: It was a really big team. We had people from all over the country and different disciplines… The one thing we didn’t have were any MDs. That wasn’t a conscious decision, just how it worked out. People think about medical research, or health research, and they think about doctors. Here we have nutritionists, we have nurses, we have a social worker… We have people from all across the healthcare spectrum.
The Rotation: I was intrigued by the use of the concept of the Good Mind, a concept familiar to Indigenous people from the community that was addressed by this adaptation, in the modification of the SSB curriculum, which also introduced the metaphor of the Clean and Dirty River as a framework for the curriculum. These worked for the specific Indigenous group the intervention was tested on, who were male athletes in the Northeastern U.S. Would these metaphors be understood to all Indigenous people?
EH: What you’re asking me about is Native Science. That’s kind of the core of cultural tailoring. The old mainstream perspective on cultural tailoring of health literature is “Well, let’s just change the color scheme and maybe add some photos. If they speak a different language, we’ll change the language. Or maybe we’ll make the font size bigger.”
The Rotation: Sort of like when someone doesn’t understand English, so the other person just speaks louder?
EH: That’s a good way to think about it. Think about how that feels, if you’ve ever been to another country and people have done that to you… But when we’re talking about actual cultural tailoring, you really want to think about, Who are the people you’re trying to communicate with, How do they think? What’s important to them? What is their culture? And so, when you do that… it stops being about changing the color scheme – well, actually, maybe the color scheme is important. A lot of Native tribes – I’m not going to say all, because that would be disrespectful, [since] there are 574 recognized tribes in this country right now, and that number’s changing all the time, and we’re all different – color is important to us. When I go and spend time with my tribe, I can tell who’s Apache because of the colors they’re wearing. And I can tell who’s Comanche because of the colors they’re wearing. So color’s important.
The Rotation: That’s why I was wondering, when you are culturally tailoring an intervention or instrument, are there terms that transcend differences between the tribes? I’m asking whether the ways that you modified the tool are fundamentally, across the board, things that would be understood, regardless of tribe.
EH: I don’t think I could say that. I’d have to talk to each person and say, “Does this make sense to you?” Until I had talked to someone from every single tribe or community – and even within tribes there’s differences – I’d have to really do a scan to be able to confidently say yes or no.
So getting back to [cultural tailoring] – we have to get to what is meaningful for people. So it’s not just about color and not just about pictures, but what is meaningful for those people.”
The Rotation: I look at many studies that aren’t designed like this. Is this research practice of culturally tailoring instruments or interventions something fairly new?
EH: Yes. The practice of really digging deep into a community and finding out what is meaningful to you. And it is not just using an algorithm, but going in and saying, “Is this color aesthetically pleasing to you? Are there colors that we shouldn’t be using? Are there pictures that we shouldn’t be using?” You know, in some communities you don’t include pictures of people who have passed on. Which is challenging, because – people die. And so you have to be very careful with that. And in other communities they really want that, to celebrate people who have been important to them.
In science, they want algorithms. In dissemination and implementation research, it’s all about, “What works here should be able to work everywhere else.” And that’s just not the case in Native communities. So, I can’t take the Clean and Dirty River model and use it in the Southwest. Because we just don’t have the same accessibility to water. So I can use the same practice of finding a meaningful metaphor and trying to transform it, but I can’t use Clean and Dirty River.
Figure 1 from Haozous, E., Yeary, K., Maybee, W., Porter, C., Zoellner, J., John, B., Henry, W. A. E., & Haring, R. C. (2024). Indigenous knowledge and sugar sweetened beverages: Qualitative adaptations towards chronic disease prevention and intervention. Explore (New York, N.Y.), 20(6), 103066. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2024.103066. Shared with author permission.
The Rotation: I was curious about the graphic in the article, which depicts the stages of cultural tailoring of evidence-based interventions.
EH: That was just me trying to make something that was usable. Part of it is, we have this whole curriculum for the program that we didn’t want to publish, because we didn’t want it to become mainstream.
The Rotation: You don’t want it to be used like a blunt instrument.
EH: Exactly.
The Rotation: Publication of these findings is intended to demonstrate cultural tailoring in practice, but it is not intended as a product to be posted online or whatever.
EH: If people want to contact my colleagues and see the materials they created, it’s up to them.
The Rotation: Were all the team members Indigenous?
EH: Some people were not. We spent some time with the non-Indigenous team members getting them to understand… Some people were saying, “You’ll never get them to drink water.” Because there’s no precedent in the literature where you could convince people who were basically addicted to drinking SSB to stop drinking sweet things. And so we had to do a lot of teaching within the team to say, Look, a lot of traditional beverages are sweet, they’re just not sugar-sweetened. They’re sweetened with berries, there are teas that you can sweeten. And natural stevia grows in the area where we did this research. And they were like, “They’ll never choose water.” And we were able to prove them wrong.
The Rotation: Part of the work being done here is to dismantle the assumptions people are making.
EH: For one of them, this person had been working in the field for a very long time, and her biggest success was getting people to drink diet sodas. And we were like, maybe we can aim for a different purpose.
The Rotation: How much of your published work has been related to Indigenous people?
EH: I always get called in as the expert on Indigenous research. I’m happy to do that. That’s my mission. I’ve published in a lot of different places, domains, whether it’s large data analysis or qualitative research looking at access to care in different places, whether that’s in Indian Health Service or pain management or telehealth.
The Rotation: Do you have recommendations for those who are new to reading research conducted in Indigenous populations?
EH: The first thing I would suggest is that when people are reading an article, they find articles that are written by Indigenous authors. Usually there’s a disclosure statement if a person [on the team is] Native. You want a team that has Native people on the team. I’m starting to see articles coming from other countries where they’re just slurping up data from American sources, and they don’t have Native authors, and they’re terrible. The American Journal of Public Health is usually very careful about this. You want to make sure that [researchers have] followed data ownership guidelines from the tribes. That is usually included in the disclosure with the article. Usually the top tier journals will follow that, and the peer reviewers will keep track of that. It’s a very small circle, you start to see the same people publishing.
The Rotation: What was your experience working on this project?
EH: It was a great project. I like doing that kind of work, because it really makes me work my Indigenous mind, and I get to work with Native teams, which I really like to do.
The Rotation: How long did the project last, start to finish?
EH: It was a couple years, and it all happened during COVID. We had to do a lot of the interviews online, which was hard. But one of the best parts was talking to these men who really knew a lot about their culture, and a lot about how to encourage young men to drink water, and what was important to them.
The Rotation: I was struck by the quote in the article from a participant in the intervention who suggested that something that would make others in their community pay attention to reducing SSB consumption was the high cost of dental care, and the prospect of having dental problems, as being more persuasive than health issues which would appear farther down the road.
EH: There’s a lot going on there, like the fact that they don’t have access to good dental care. There’s so much more in there that we couldn’t add.
The Rotation: When we think about barriers to access to care, people are primarily thinking about, say, African American communities or urban versus rural communities. I think it is rare for people to perceive there are Native communities all around us confronting the same or similar issues. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
For those interested in learning more about Native Science, Dr. Haozous recommends Gregory Cajete’s Native science : natural laws of interdependence (Clear Light Publishers, 2000.) This book is available to borrow from Georgetown University through Himmelfarb’s WRLC consortial borrowing program.
References
Haozous, E., Yeary, K., Maybee, W., Porter, C., Zoellner, J., John, B., Henry, W. A. E., & Haring, R. C. (2024). Indigenous knowledge and sugar sweetened beverages: Qualitative adaptations towards chronic disease prevention and intervention. Explore (New York, N.Y.), 20(6), 103066. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2024.103066
Himmelfarb Library’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (DEI Committee) is proud to announce the release of the new LGBTQ+ Health Research Guide! The guide features resources that address LBGTQ+ healthcare in clinical and research settings and explores sexual orientation and gender identity barriers to accessing healthcare. You’ll also find general resources including links to LGBTQ+ health organizations at GW and in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. Relevant books, e-books, and journals from Himmelfarb’s collection, educational resources about pronouns and preferred terminology, and podcasts to help you learn about LGBTQ+ healthcare are showcased in the guide.
Please note that some resources, such as e-books and journal collections, may require GW credentials to access.
The Researchers tab of the guide provides insight into useful MeSH search terms, links to helpful research-related guides, and information about conducting research. This tab also features published works related to LGBTQ+ health by GW authors in Himmelfarb’s Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC).
The DEI Committee wants this guide to be a high-quality resource relevant to our community, and we encourage our users to share relevant resources for inclusion in the LGBTQ+ Health Guide through our Resource Suggestion Form. If you are a member of a GW organization and would like your organization to be featured in this guide, or if you’re interested in partnering with the DEI Committee, please contact the current committee chair, Brittany Smith, at bsmith91@gwu.edu.
In recent years, there has been an increased awareness of mental health, mental illness stigma, and how it impacts people in all areas of life. While many workplaces offer services and accommodations for employees with mental health or mental illness concerns, people may face structural barriers when attempting to access these services. Additionally, it is difficult engaging in conversations about mental wellness as harmful stereotypes about mental illness impacts the ways people think about or imagine a person with mental illnesses.
Burns & Green (2019) and Lo & Herman (2017) published research on mental illness and its impacts on academic librarians; their findings illuminated perceptions and misconceptions about mental illness among the study's population and some respondents shared personal stories about their experiences with being open about their mental illness diagnoses with their colleagues. Both articles are excellent ways to learn more about these topics and they serve as introductions to better understanding how people with mental illnesses navigate the workplace.
In ‘Academic Librarians’ Experiences and Perceptions on Mental Illness Stigma and the Workplace’, Burns & Green focus specifically on how mental illness stigma plays a role in academic librarians’ professional lives. The researchers surveyed hundreds of academic librarians, collecting data about “concerns around discrimination…disclosure…[and] self-esteem as a whole.” (Burns & Green, 2019, pg 641) Based on quantitative and qualitative data, “the most obvious finding is that there is a fear of disclosing one’s own mental illness in the academic library environment.” (Burns & Green, 2019, pg 653) Survey respondents shared their stories about their decision to disclose their mental illness diagnosis, the support they may or may receive at their individual institutions, and what work they believe needs to be done to address stigma and shame.
Alternatively, ‘An Investigation of Factors Impacting the Wellness of Academic Library Employees’ by Lo & Herman looks at the term “wellness”, how workplaces incorporate or fail to incorporate wellness into their settings, and the factors that contribute to academic librarians’ overall sense of wellness. “This study reveals that most academic library employees feel overwhelmed quite frequently. While age and working overtime are factors, the attitude of the individual also has an impact.” (Lo & Herman, 2017, pg. 802) The researchers also found that academic librarians valued other forms of wellness besides physical wellness. They wrote that “Age again seems to be an important factor regarding respondents’ perception of the different dimensions of wellness…Overall, respondents placed higher importance on their spiritual wellness and intellectual wellness than physical wellness.”(Lo & Herman, 2017, pg. 803)
Lo & Herman and Burns & Green’s research shows that addressing mental illness and wellness in the workplace may be complex, but the end results may be highly valued and beneficial to employees. Having conversations with colleagues about wellness in the workplace can gradually change an organization for the better. These two articles are great resources to refer back to when having conversations about the workplace, mental illness, dismantling stigma, and addressing all aspects of wellness among people.
References:
Burns, E., & Green, K. E. C. (2019). Academic Librarians’ Experiences and Perceptions on Mental Illness Stigma and the Workplace. College & Research Libraries, 80(5), 638–657. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.5.638
Lo, L. S., & Herman, B. (2017). An Investigation of Factors Impacting the Wellness of Academic Library Employees. College & Research Libraries, 78(6), 789-. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.6.789
The book brings together personal narratives from LHS+ medical students and regional perspectives from organizations across the United States which led to the formation of the national body. The chapter "Tu Lucha es Mi Lucha" (Your Struggle is My Struggle) examines the development of a health policy initiative led by LHS+ medical students. Other chapters focus on the role of faculty/physician advisors who are partners in the success of LHS+ students, as well as the support roles of Student Affairs offices, and the role of Medical Education offices in training future practitioners to care for LHS+ individuals. The book also covers faculty development and advancement of LHS+ faculty in graduate medical education, which touches on topics such as culturally relevant faculty mentoring.
For those interested and engaged in medical education, or those wishing to gain more detailed insight into the history of LHS+ people in the graduate medical education field, this book is a unique and comprehensive resource.
References
Sánchez, J. P., & Rodriguez, D. (2023). Latino, Hispanic, or of Spanish Origin+ Identified Student Leaders in Medicine : Recognizing More Than 50 Years of Presence, Activism, and Leadership. (1st ed.). Springer International Publishing AG.
In honor of August being Transgender History Month, we bring you a reading list that highlights transgender history and elevates transgender voices. Are you interested in learning more about transgender history? Consider adding one of the following titles to your reading list.
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyman, Ph.D.: This book explores academic research and cultural writing focused on transgender and gender-nonconforming people and examines gender norms perpetuated by society. Before We Were Trans highlights stories of trans people worldwide, throughout human history and chronicles often overlooked trans experiences. Request this title through our Consortium Loan Service (CLS).
Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg: Transgender people have existed for as long as people have. Part memoir, part history, and part gender studies text, this book explores the lives of transgender history-makers from around the globe. A print copy of this title will soon be available at GW’s Gelman Library.
Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories by Alex Bakker: In the 1950s, a group of transgender people from both sides of the Atlantic created communities that profoundly shaped the history and study of sexuality and gender. They created private networks of affirmation and trust by exchanging letters and pictures among themselves and submitted their stories and photographs to medical journals and popular magazines to educate doctors and the public alike. Others of My Kind celebrates the faces, lives, and personal networks of those who drove 20th-century transgender history. Click the link above to read an e-book version of this title.
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton: This exceptional book explores the intersectionality of transgender history and Black history through a multi-faceted lens. This is the story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first publicly known transgender figure. Click the link above to read an e-book version of this title.
Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender by Stef M. Shuster: Transgender medicine is a rapidly growing medical field. This book explores the history of trans medicine and current practices through interviews with medical providers, and ethnographic and archival research. Trans Medicine provides a rare look inside how providers make decisions when providing care to trans people. An e-book version of this title is available through Himmelfarb, or you can request a print copy through our CLS service.
The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet by Avery Dame-Griff: This book explores how the rise of the internet has shaped transgender identity and activism from the 1980s through today. This book combines a largely ignored period within the history of computing and the poorly understood role of technology in queer and trans social movements and offers a new understanding of both. Click on the link above to read the e-book version of this book.
From This Day Forward by Bullfrog Films: While this one isn’t a book, it is an interesting look at trans experience. This film follows filmmaker Sharon Shattuck as she returns home before her wedding to explore the mystery of her upbringing: How her transgender father Trisha and her straight-identified mother Marcia stayed together against all odds. This moving portrayal of an American family coping with intimate transformation is available in Himmelfarb’s streaming video collection and in our third-floor audiovisual collection (call number: HQ77.9 .F76 2015). A print book companion is available in the stacks (call number: HQ77.9 .F76 2015).
