Professor Suzanne Gaulocher reports on her conference experience at one of the largest public health conferences in the world.
The first week of November I attended the American Public Health Association Conference in Philadelphia, PA. This is one of the largest public health conferences in the world and draws people from all over. The theme for this year’s conference was Creating the Healthiest Nation: For science. For action. For health. Often when I attend conferences, I document what I like to call ‘diamonds in the rough’ – ideas or concepts that spark my attention and hold meaning for me. To be clear, this does not mean I agree with everything that I find sparks my interest, though I find it important and thought provoking. How we understand health needs new vision. For me, this vision includes a dedication to social justice, progressive pedagogy, and robust and innovative research approaches.
Social Justice
At this meeting, I tend to participate in sessions that have the words community, social justice, or equity, in the title. Social justice is what love looks like in public. In bettering our own practice, knowledge about how to be better at engaging in this work ethically and inclusively is essential. Ethical public health practice goes beyond the IRB. If you do research ‘on’ people, don’t do it. Co-produced knowledge is more effective in motivating change and it is worth pondering research ‘in’ vs. ‘with’ vs. ‘on’ communities. Community based participatory research creates engaged stakeholders and more effective interventions, though it takes more time. Time is essential in CBPR. The more time a CBPR process takes, the more trust is built and the partners and the community benefit. Even so, community based participatory research has also been culpable in producing processes that perpetuate inequities. Autoethnographic approaches to research have been problematic and need addressing as we move forward. Racist epidemiology and race based clinical metrics perpetuate inequity in health and health care.
Progressive Pedagogy
Systems of oppression are by design and racism and sexism aids capitalism (Woah!). The charge for public health and especially for my own practice is to understand and change how social divisions based on social class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and age affect the public’s health. Working with students is an approach, though how students are trained matters. My commitment includes developing courses and materials that spur critical thinking about social inequalities in health, in their present and historical context. What compels us to engage in social justice work? What would happen if we taught students how to engage with community partners through a justice lens? We all work at a university that primarily focuses on teaching students. Training people with heart is more important than teaching content. Progressive pedagogy such as collective reflection, open classrooms, and community engaged learning fosters a community of practice and shared learning and decision making.
I was reminded of Paulo Freire’s ‘listen, dialogue, reflect’ cycle. Shared learning helps to break down power differentials. If we teach social justice in the classroom and then run our classes traditionally, we are not modeling social justice. Teaching undergrads to take a leadership role in research (and teaching even) will help build the public health workforce. A key goal here is to teach critical thinking and action progressive pedagogy. Action is a way to learn about the world. It is time to elevate the voices of the next generation.
Robust Research
I’m somewhat new to small town living and so I also attended sessions that focused on rural health. What works in urban areas does not often work in rural areas. In my field, it becomes important to model intervention based on the communities served and rural communities have different needs than urban communities. Further, there is a charge in public health to robustly look at social determinants of health and think beyond the individual. Social determinants of health have become mainstream, so we must remember that these determinants refer to structural conditions and work to understand how this produces health and illness. Culture is central to achieving public health goals. Leadership, decision making, people and processes/systems are affected by the culture in a community.
It is important to takes on controversial topics. Disrupting norms creates discomfort in people because it shakes people to the core. It is in that disruption that we can put pieces back together more soundly, ethically and justly. Marginalized people are more like to experience poor health and more suffering at no fault of their own. Colonization is not a metaphor, it is about all our lives. History is the biggest dataset we have. It is important to learn about indigenous people including exploration of the land and people and historical trauma is essential in public health. Their history has not been erased.
Finally, social justice is the foundation of public health practice. This conference reminded me of the inequities in health across this nation and world. Radical changes in social structures and in systems are the charge of public health and though it is incremental at times, it reminds me that small things matter, like curricular reform and empowering students, our future workforce. There is so much more to talk about: communications and data translation, food sovereignty, climate change (and the disparities that come with that), gender disparity and the impact of racism on health. Progressive pedagogy is one way to spur critical thinking in intersectionality to address social justice in health.
About Suzanne
Suzanne Gaulocher is Assistant Professor in Public Health and is the Associate Director the Center for Healthy Communities. Before joining PSU, she directed the Community Engaged Learning Program focused on Health at Stanford University. She holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she was a part of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment focusing on the intersection of human and environmental health. Her research and teaching centers around the intersection between human health and the environment with focus on community engagement, social justice and health equity.
