Dear NH AHEC Health Equity Scholars,
Happy New Year! Hopefully everyone had a chance to recharge. And for the Scholars who took a little time from the break to meet with high schoolers interested in health careers—thank you! Your words of guidance and encouragement could be a spark that helps a young person gain confidence as they work toward big goals…
What’s New? A Lot!
This newsletter edition is full of real-time virtual opportunities to engage on aspects of health equity with local and national experts. The lineup is below, and on our website.
It’s also an opportunity to highlight some exciting news from our academic partners.
From Franklin Pierce—The announcement of a Congressional appropriation to support specialized equipment for the University’s Master of Physician Assistant Studies (MPAS) program, with a focus on rural and medically underserved communities. Spearheaded by NH’s Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Representative Annie Kuster, the grant through the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, awards FPU $825,000 for healthcare simulation training equipment. Congratulations!
And of course, welcome to the new cohort of Franklin Pierce PA students—the MPAS class of 2025. We look forward to getting to know you.
From the Geisel School of Medicine’s MLK Health Equity Celebration Committee is an opportunity to “learn from past intersections of health and activism; explore and support current movements throughout the world; and ignite a call to action toward sustainable progress.” This year’s MLK Celebration invites health care students and professionals to engage as leaders in a social movement. Thank you all for your interest in this work.
Please take a look at the offerings below, and take care!
Best,
Kate
We’re All in This Together ECHO
Tuesday, January 10, 2023, through March 7, 2023 (every other Tuesday)
12:45 pm –1:45 pm ET
TO REGISTER
Enhancing knowledge and strengthening partnerships between early care providers and families with substance use conditions is an interactive, web-based learning model specifically aimed at supporting early childhood-serving programs. The series explores a compassionate approach to trauma, addiction, treatment, and recovery, and encourages collaboration with and for families experiencing substance use conditions. Experts in early childhood education, early intervention, trauma and recovery informed care, substance use treatment, pediatrics, and community members who have experienced parenting while using or in recovery, come together to build connections for better outcomes for all. De-identified cases and scenarios will be discussed in a collaborative learning environment.
Sessions:
- Relationship Building (1/10)
- Basics of Addiction and Recovery (1/24)
- Trauma-Informed Care & Behavioral Management Methods (2/7)
- What’s My Story? Acknowledging one’s own history and the impact it has on working with families (2/21)
- Nuts and Bolts: How to make referrals to community and family supports (3/7)
Mindfulness for a Distracted, Deserving World (Webinar)
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
6:00 pm–7:00 pm ET
NH Healthcare Workers for Climate Action
TO REGISTER
As we each navigate an increasingly fractured and at-risk world, it only makes sense to strengthen the powers we have to engage with wisdom and heartfulness for the long run. Based on more than forty years of research, evidence tells us that mindfulness practices can support the ability to:
- Corral and focus your mind
- Recognize the information and stimuli that is supportive versus what distracts or occludes clear seeing
- Reduce reactivity and enhance perspective-taking
- Relate to complexity and world dissonance with openness, understanding and compassion
- Deepen access to intrinsic values
- Strengthen your cognitive foundation for effective and sustainable action
Join Margaret Fletcher for an introductory hour of theory, evidence, and practical methods to apply in your daily life and around the stresses of climate work. Participants will explore the potential of training the mind to support emotion regulation, self-care, and personal agency in facing the climate crisis.
Margaret Fletcher was trained and certified through University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness (UMASS CFM) to deliver Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and other mindfulness-based programs. Margaret served as senior teacher and senior teacher-trainer at UMASS CFM until its closing in 2019. She is a co-founder of East Coast Mindfulness, a fully online home for mindfulness programs and MBSR teacher training. Margaret is an advisor to the BESS Family Foundation Eco-Dharma Advisory Board, a group committed to leading efforts at the intersection of mindfulness/meditation and the environmental impact of climate change and biodiversity loss.
17th Annual MLK Health Equity Celebration 2023
Geisel School of Medicine
EVERYONE WELCOME!
“Of all the forms of inequity, Injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
HEALTH IN REVOLUTION
In commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, legacy, we will explore the role of health in revolution through the lens of the past, present, and future. We live in a continuous state of revolution, marked by the ebbs and flows of triumphs and tragedies. We seek to learn from past intersections of health and activism; explore and support current movements throughout the world; and ignite a call to action toward sustainable progress. Through these lenses, we will further define our role in not only maintaining but also accelerating the momentum of the revolution.
The 2023 Geisel MLK Celebration is funded by Geisel’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement, the Dartmouth College Office for Institutional Diversity and Equity, and the Alumni Relations Office
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2023
Location: Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine Campus, Kellogg Building Auditorium 200
To join virtually on Saturday, go to:
https://dartmouth.zoom.us/j/6033392686
Meeting ID: 603 339 2686
9:00 am—Continental Breakfast and Welcome
9:20 am—Movie Screening and Discussion: “After Parkland” (Filmed in the days after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people, this intimate chronicle weaves together interviews, vérité footage, and personal videos into a moving portrait of one community’s crusade to turn tragedy into progress. Discussion facilitated by Steve Chapman, MD; Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Health)
11:00 am—Achieving Health Equity Through Advocacy (Presenter: Marie Ramas, President of the New Hampshire Academy of Family Physicians)
Noon—Lunch (provided by Karibbean) and Music (provided by DJ Sean)
1:00 pm—Doing Health Justice (Health and illness are not randomly distributed. Structures such as race and social class, racism and capitalism, and all of our social, political and economic institutions create and maintain health inequities. How do we eliminate the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality in Black communities and among others who are hit hardest by systems of oppression? Centering health justice as a set of measurable actions offers promise. Presenter: Sirry Alang, PhD, Associate Professor, Black Communities and the Social Determinants of Health, University of Pittsburgh School of Education)
2:00 pm—Bridging the Gap: Increasing Abortion Access in a Post-Roe America (This discussion will focus on what are abortion funds and why they need to exist, the ways we’ve scaled up our services in the face of post-Roe America, an overview of the abortion access landscape, as a whole in New Hampshire, and what barriers for access still exist. Presenter: Josie Pinto; Founder and Executive Director of the Reproductive Freedom Fund of NH)
3:00 pm—Ethics and Disaster Medicine (Dr. Fernando will focus on Ethics in Disaster Medicine. He is currently working in Ukraine and will reference the various global locations he’s worked in disasters and how the news and people only seem to focus on the white refugees vs. those of any other ethnicity with the Caucasian being a small segment of the 120 million refugees worldwide. Presenter: Rajeev Fernando, MD, Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Chiraj Inc.)
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
Location: Dartmouth Health Auditorium A-D
11:00 am: “I am the Dream: The Past, Present and Future” Awards Luncheon + Day of Service (MLK Keynote Address: David Satcher, MD, PhD, 16th U.S. Surgeon General. Dr. Satcher will hold a fireside chat regarding his fifty-year career addressing what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., referred to as the “most shocking and inhumane inequality—injustice in health care.”)
Human Trafficking Prevention in Tribal Communities (Webinar)
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
2:00 pm–3:00 pm ET
TO REGISTER
Register by Wednesday, January 18, 2023, at 1:00 pm (Access to the webinar is made available upon registration.)
As part of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is hosting a webinar that will explore how human trafficking impacts American Indian/Alaskan Native (AIAN) populations, the role transportation and public transit has in trafficking, how transit agencies can prevent trafficking and how drivers and other front-line transit employees can intervene if trafficking is identified. This webinar will include a presentation on a new resource toolkit designed to increase awareness and prevention of human trafficking in AIAN communities and populations, developed in partnership by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), South West Transit Association (SWTA) and the Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) and funded through an FTA crime-prevention grant.
Health Centers and Patient Violence Prevention / Centros de Salud y Prevención de la Violencia del Paciente* (Webinar)
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
2:00 pm ET
TO REGISTER
Join the National Center for Farmworker Health and Health Partners on IPV + Exploitation on this webinar, to be presented in English with Spanish interpretation, where presenters will define and explore the intersection of intimate partner violence (IPV), and human trafficking (HT) and exploitation, and how these factors impact patient health. Presenters will also describe the “CUES” (Confidentiality, Universal Education, Empowerment, and Support), an evidence-based intervention and how it can be implemented at a health center along with strategies for partnering with domestic violence and sexual assault (DV/SA) advocacy programs that can be helpful in responding to IPV and HT amongst patient populations, including agricultural workers.
Dartmouth Health Virtual Grand Rounds: Achieving Universal, Affordable Health Care for All: The Role of Single Payer Reform
Friday, January 20, 2023
8:00 am
Medicine Grand Rounds: Livestream Link
Dr. Woolhandler will discuss the current problems in health inequality and health care access in the US, the financial barriers to care faced by patients and the strengths and weakness of major approaches to reform, including single-payer Medicare for All.
Presenter: Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, MA. Distinguished Professor of Public Health, City University of New York at Hunter College
Evidence-Based and Promising Interventions to Address the Intersections of IPV and Maternal Health (Webinar)
Monday, January 23, 2023
1:00 pm ET
TO REGISTER
The intersection of intimate partner violence (IPV), racism and maternal mortality among birthing people remains one of the least explored and under-resourced topics, yet is central to ensuring expectant and parenting people do not continue to die from preventable causes. This webinar will feature individual and organizational level strategies that health centers can implement to advance health equity and increase positive health outcomes for birthing people who have experienced IPV. We will hear from an OB/GYN working to improve the clinical response to IPV, as well as from a survivor about their experience with the healthcare system during pregnancy and birth. The evidence-based CUES intervention, an adaptable health center protocol, and tools for building partnerships and strengthening connections between health centers and domestic violence advocates and other community-based programs will be shared. It is crucial that we learn about innovative clinical practices, birth worker activism, consumer and survivor experiences, and health models that show promise in promoting health and justice for birthing people.
Addressing Partner Inflicted Brain Injuries with a Health Equity Lens (Webinar)
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
1:00 pm ET
TO REGISTER
Research shows up to 92% of IPV survivors who experienced physical or sexual violence report head, neck, and facial injuries, which can result in brain injury (Valera et al., 2022). Brain injuries as a result of domestic violence have long lasting impacts on a survivor’s health, wellbeing, safety, and even economic security. It is crucial that community health center staff understand barriers survivors living with brain injuries experience and work to adopt promising practices to better meet their needs. This webinar will bring together leading researchers and practitioners in the field to address Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) impacting individuals living with partner inflicted brain injuries (PIBI). It will provide participants with tools to advance health equity for individuals with PIBI.