Racism as a Public Health Issue- 11/18/24

Grazell R. Howard, JD., is the Co – founder and Chief Strategist of ATIRTEC, Health Solution Company and founder and CEO of a strategic  consulting firm. With wide-ranging experience in both the public and private sectors, Ms. Howard has worked for the Honorable Charles Rangel, as a former prosecutor for the Queens District Attorney's Office and as a lawyer for a major insurance company where she developed strategy and managed litigation. Grazell has advised, coached and partnered with some of America’s top executives and their organizations. She has worked with senior leadership at NICHD in designing and mobilizing diverse people around reproductive health issues and sudden infant death syndrome, which disproportionately impacts black women. As a health advocate, she has been the architect of community engagement initiatives that have changed the  trajectory of major health concerns, including the “Back to Sleep” campaign that is still considered one of the most successful NIH/NICHD public/ private partnerships. Grazell served as the legal advisor and ethicist to the NIH Cancer Health Disparities Commission established by President George W. Bush and as Chair of The Black AIDS Institute, the only black domestic “think and do” tank focusing on HIV/AIDS, with special emphasis on mobilization, information dissemination, science and treatment training for the non-clinical workforce. She has served as: National First Vice President of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Johnson C.Smith University Board of Visitors ,an Advisory Board member to the Capital One Coaching council, Advisory Board member of NCCU School of Law . A graduate of the North Carolina Central University School of Law. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Grazell and her family cherish her Thurgood Marshall Award of Excellence.

Janette Robinson-Flint-  As a founding member of Black Women for Wellness, Janette currently holds the executive director position. Janette stays attuned with women’s health issues through work with Black Women for Wellness and as a consultant designing and developing women's programs with various community based organizations in Southern California. Ms. Robinson Flint is involved with the Women's Health Collaborative, a California statewide organization of women leaders and advocates, a member of the inaugural class with Women's Health Leadership, a California network of grassroots community leaders to increase access to health care and service, and serves on the community advisory board of South Los Angeles Health Project- REI-WIC, which coordinates Black Infant Health Programs in Los Angeles.

National Advisory Board for Merger Watch – a advocacy and monitor group working toward insuring continuation of women’s health care services (especially reproductive) as religious hospitals take over secular hospitals

California Pan Ethnic Health Network – policy organization working with California State legislature to form and implement policy increasing access to culturally and linguistically health services and care for the people of California

Leadership Development in Interethnic Relationships (LDIR) Advisory Council bringing together social justice organizing and health advocates

African American Task Force – Breast and Cervical Cancer advocates through Partnered for Progress

Reproductive Justice Coalition of Los Angeles – a coalition of women of color organizations working toward reproductive justice for women & girls of color in Los Angeles 

Ms. Robinson Flint is the Southern California contact person of the California Women's Agenda, a network of grassroots agencies and individuals started after the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing China, to bring the Platform of Action to the women and girls of California. As a organizer with the Women's Lens Agenda, a conference focusing on how women can have a greater voice in the setting and implementation of international policy.

Some of Us Are Brave – coalition of African American radio programs – currently airing programs on Pacifica Radio – Thursday 2:00PM 90.7 FM Los Angeles

Currently living in Los Angels, she is an advocate and activist for Black women's health, loves to travel, read and involve women in our own empowerment process.

Adjoa Jones, MBA began her career in public health with the L.A. County Department of Health Services (DHS) as a Student Professional Worker. During her tenure with the Immunization Program, a fellow colleague recommended her for a Community Health Worker position with Great Beginnings for Black Babies, which subsequently led to the beginning of her work with women, children and their families. Simultaneously, she received her BS in Health Science-Health Care Administration from CSU Dominguez Hills, and at the height of the pandemic received her MBA in Nonprofit Management at the American Jewish University, while also becoming a Doula and Certified Lactation Education Specialist.

Adjoa currently serves as the Chief of the Birth Equity Unit and Director, of the African American Infant and Maternal Mortality (AAIMM) Prevention Initiative Programs at Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Programs of the Health Promotion Bureau within the L.A. County Department of Public Health (DPH). She is the visionary of the AAIMM Community Action Team (CAT) model, founding lead of the first in L.A. County - the South LA/South Bay AAIMM CAT developed in 2018, and co-developer of the AAIMM Prevention Initiative. She has worked within DPH and DHS for the past 27 years, serving as a Public Health Leader/Advocate in various programs to improve the health and wellness of women, men, children and their families throughout the County.

She previously completed the Beatriz Solis Women’s Policy Institute fellowship in 2019-2020 with the Women’s Foundation of California on the L.A. County Health Justice Team; and co-developed a Doula Board motion to improve the health and birth outcomes of Black women and babies, locally, regionally and statewide. Adjoa has served a member volunteer with local non-profit organizations as a support group facilitator, conference planner, Fund Development Manager, Board Champion, and more. Also, Ms. Jones has received numerous service awards, the latest the Maternal Mental Health Now 2023 Perinatal Mental Health Champion Award and 2023 Community Impact Award from the California Black Health Network.

Finally, Adjoa is a former teen mother, proud Mama, grandmother, daughter, family member and friend to many. Adjoa has dedicated her life to serving Black women and girls to improve their reproductive and overall health/wellness.

Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick A. Bell

ISBN: 0465068170

Publication Date: 1992-10-13

The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the "racist outbursts” of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.

Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

ISBN: 9780679758693

Publication Date: 1998-12-29

Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication.   "A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and gender justice in America." --Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow   In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America's systemic abuse of Black women's bodies. From slave masters' economic stake in bonded women's fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood--and the exclusion of Black women's reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas.   "Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States." --Ms.

Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington

ISBN: 9780767915472

Publication Date: 2008-01-08

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge-a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers-and indeed the whole medical establishment-with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.

The 400 year Holocaust : White America's legal, psychopathic, and sociopathic Black genocide - and the revolt against Critical Race Theory by Dante D King

ISBN: 9781794862500

Published: 2022

The 400-Year Holocaust: White America's Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory examines and discusses factions of the legal history of anti-blackness and Whiteness through colonialism and the United States, and its impacts on present-day America. It centers anti-blackness as the core tenet of "racism" in White America and amplifies its relationship to the inherent "value" of Whiteness (i.e., White identity, White culture, White institutions, etc.). The text repositions and critically examines four core White American economic, moral, socio-cultural, and ideological institutions: human sex trafficking, rape, pedophilia, and violence (murder). Furthermore, it positions racism as a disease/illness (i.e., psychosis, psychopathy, sociopathy, etc.), rather than a mere "social construct".