Anuli Njoku

Anuli Njoku Speaking Topics

• Spaces to Heal for BIPOC Women in Higher Education: Providing the Table and Seats

  Abstract: BIPOC women faculty and administrators are breaking barriers, maintaining excellence, being award-winning scholars, and flourishing as experts in their fields. Still, they must survive while they thrive, and grapple with insecurity, writing blocks, and ‘imposter syndrome’. This inspires the courage to reassure, uplift, mentor, invite, and make collaborative spaces for BIPOC women to express feelings of vulnerability, unease, and ultimately, hope. When seats are missing at the table, one can bring their own table and seats. In a field of often unforgiving critics, the authors share how they provided underrepresented scholars the opportunity to promote authenticity and illuminate their voices.

  Session Objectives:

  • Reflect on and identify various experiences of BIPOC women in academia.  
  • Demonstrate the use of various strategies for creating space and opportunities for collaboration among BIPOC women.   
  • Discuss the importance of BIPOC women's voices and the creation of spaces in which they can thrive. 

• Building Trust in Environmental Justice Communities for Science and Public health

  Environmental change such as climate change and extreme weather events and their corresponding health effects can disrupt daily life in endless ways. However, impacts of environmental change, from extreme weather to rising ocean levels, are not distributed equally and often disproportionately affect historically marginalized and underserved communities. Climate impacts like raging storms and floods, increasing wildfires, severe heat, poor air quality, access to food and water, and disappearing shorelines can put Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, low-income groups, people with disabilities, women, children, older people, and others at greater risk.

  Environmental racism can manifest itself as racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and enforcement of regulation and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and siting of polluting industries, the official sanctioning of life-threatening poisons and pollutants in communities of color, and the history of excluding communities of color from mainstream environmental groups, decision-making boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies. Moreover, there is a need to examine how environmental racism intensifies the COVID-19 pandemic and illuminates racial inequities in exposure to environmental pollutants.

  In the United States, there has been a long history of environmental injustice that disproportionately affects racial and ethnic underrepresented populations and economically disadvantaged communities due to racially targeted policies and widespread discrimination. As a result, these communities—sometimes referred to as "environmental justice communities"—disproportionately experience the negative effects that pollution in the air and water has on health.

  Building relationships and trust is a critical first step for scientists doing work in these communities. Effective strategies are needed to facilitate this process. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the disproportionate effect of environmentally related health problems on historically marginalized and underserved communities and explore strategies to build trust in environmental justice communities for science and public health.

  Learning Outcome(s):

  • Describe environmental injustice in racial and ethnic underrepresented populations and economically disadvantaged communities in the United States.
  • Identify strategies to build trust in environmental justice communities for science and public health.

Multicultural Health: Hispanic and Latinx American Populations

Objectives:

• Provide an overview of the social and economic circumstances of Hispanics/Latinx Americans in the United States.
• Present an overview of Hispanic/Latinx beliefs about the causes of illness.
• Describe at least three culture-bound illnesses among Hispanic/Latinx Americans.
• Discuss Hispanics/Latinx Americans' health risk behaviors and common illnesses.
• List at least six tips for working with Hispanic/Latinx American populations.

Addressing the Structural and Social Determinants of Black Maternal Mortality in the United States

Issues: Black women in the United States disproportionately experience adverse pregnancy outcomes, including maternal mortality, compared to women of other racial and ethnic groups. Historical legacies of institutionalized racism and bias in medicine compound this problem. The COVID-19 pandemic may aggravate existing health inequities. This necessitates exploration into existing racial disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality.

This presentation discusses structural and social determinants of Black maternal mortality in the U.S. Informed by an extensive review of the literature and guided by the Weathering Framework and Roach’s Restoring Our Own Through Transformation (ROOTT) Theoretical Framework, we examine how structural racism contributes to a greater risk of adverse obstetric outcomes among U.S. Black women. We explore how structural determinants of health (for example, slavery, structural racism, Jim Crow laws, the G.I. Bill, redlining, mass incarceration, and the 13th Amendment) shape social determinants of health (for example, food stability, education, income, built environment, neighborhood demographics, safety, housing, access to care, and incarceration) and influence racial disparities in maternal mortality.

Lessons Learned: Structural and social determinants of health interact in numerous and intersected ways to fuel rates of Black maternal mortality in the U.S. and exacerbate health disparities.

Recommendations: We outline approaches to address implicit bias and improve cultural humility in healthcare, diversify the workforce, incorporate social determinants of health into the curriculum, explore effects of environmental and occupational exposures on maternal morbidity and mortality, address the impact of structural racism on health, and improve social policies to address Black maternal mortality.

Learning Outcomes:

• Describe structural and social determinants of Black maternal mortality in the United States.
• Identify strategies to address Black maternal mortality in the United States.

Cultural Competency in Healthcare

Presentation Overview:

• Introductions
• Objectives of Session
• Key Concepts and Terms
• Changing Demographics and Multicultural Health
• Health Disparities
• Understanding Cultural Influences
• Cultural Beliefs in the Clinical Encounter
• Strategies for Working with Diverse Groups

Objectives:

• Explain why cultural considerations are important in health care.
• Define diversity, multicultural health, cultural competence, worldview, and cultural groups.
• Define health disparities and explain reasons for their existence.
• Describe demographic changes in the U.S.
• Explore how cultural values and beliefs are shaped.
• Identify cultural barriers in the clinical encounter.
• Pinpoint strategies for working with diverse groups.