Global Health Diversity & Inclusion Committee Promotes Equity through Difficult Conversations.
What began as an informal conversation between two School of Public Health staff members during a BU shuttle ride last year has blossomed into the school’s first department-level committee dedicated to improving diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ).
Pawandeep Kaur (SPH’15), alum and clinical trial director for the Department of Global Health (DGH), and Thomas Lee Jr. (SPH’19), alum and academic program administrator for DGH, formed the DGH Diversity & Inclusion committee last summer to facilitate candid conversations and identify strategies and actions that the department can implement to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. The committee marked its first full year in operation in June, just as the school released its new 5- and 10-year strategy map which now includes a goal for all departments and units to develop D&I committees.
“We identified there was a gap in talking about diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice in a global health frame and in the context that issues such as LGBTQIA+ rights, racism, and xenophobia apply to our work,” says Lee. “We also thought it was important that these conversations happen in an intimate setting among faculty and staff, and complement the broader work of the SPH and BU Offices of Diversity & Inclusion.”
“What diversity and inclusion means for the school is different than what it means for the department—and similarly, what it means for biostatistics and epidemiology is different than what it means for global health,” says Kaur, who is also a DrPH candidate at SPH. She says the committee held listening sessions with DGH faculty and staff last summer to gain insight into the DEIJ issues that are most important to them. “We didn’t have the space before to talk specifically about areas where we were lacking as a department, so these sessions gave us a lot of ideas and perspectives on what department members would like to gain from this group.”
The committee’s core working group consists of Kaur and Lee, as co-chairs, as well as their DGH colleagues Lisa Messersmith, associate professor, Lawrence Long, research assistant professor, and Zana Wangari, research fellow. Over the past year, the group has developed themed monthly programming, including a D&I Dialogue Series on select books, articles, or videos, as well as D&I trainings and panel discussions featuring DGH members or experts from other SPH departments. The dialogues are geared toward faculty and staff, while the trainings and presentations are open to the SPH community.
“Our dialogues are meant for DGH faculty and staff, who are comfortable enough with each other to have open and honest conversations in a respectful way, without being afraid to be incorrect,” says Lee. “While these conversations are internal, the implications are external.”
Past dialogues have delved into issues around racism, teaching beyond the gender binary, and LGBTQIA+ activism, while panel discussions have featured a follow-up discussion to SPH’s Conversation on Racism and Policing with Craig Andrade, associate dean of practice, as well as a presentation by Julia Lanham, assistant director of advising & relationship management, on the racial equity audit conducted by the Career & Practicum Office. For this month’s focus on disability justice, there will be a July 20 dialogue on domestic violence against women with disabilities in Cambodia, and a July 27 commemoration and panel discussion with experts from the Charles River Campus on the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Disability justice is not something that we talk about often, so the dialogue will be an opportunity to have an internal conversation to look within and learn together, and then have the broader panel discussion to build off of that conversation,” says Kaur.
And although students are not actively part of the dialogue sessions, they are still very much part of the conversation, she says. As SPH alums, both Kaur and Lee agree that they can share their perspective on the student experience, and can initiate uncomfortable conversations with their colleagues.
“I am comfortable with saying to faculty members, ‘this happened during a class, and how do we address it?’” says Kaur.
They say they have received a lot of positive feedback from DGH faculty and staff, as well as from Yvette Cozier, assistant dean of diversity, equity, inclusion, & justice.
“You don’t have to be an expert, or overtly passionate, about the topic of the month to attend events—it’s just nice to hear different perspectives and learn something new,” says Lee. “If you care about women’s rights in March, you should also care about LGBTQIA+ rights in June. People really understand how interconnected all of these conversations are.”