Venue: xʷθəθiqətəm (The Place of Many Trees)\, Liu Institute for
Global Issues\, with live stream available
This talk will tak
e place on the traditional\, ancestral\, and unceded territory of the š
xʷməθkʷəy̓əmaɁɬ (Musqueam)\, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil Waututh)\, and s
kwxwú7mesh (Squamish) peoples.
Pl
ease register in advance for either in-person or live stream tickets.
Lunch is available for in-person guests.
Abimbola\, Asthana\ , Montenegro et al. (2021) have contended that the COVID-19 pandemic\, Blac k Lives Matter\, and the Women in Global Health movement h ave brought renewed urgency to ongoing calls to decolonize global health. Y et decolonizing global health is a task of staggering complexity. As Abimbo la and Pai (2020) have theorized: "global health is a discipline that holds within itself a deep contradiction—global health was birthed in supremacy\ , but its mission is to reduce or eliminate inequities globally.” Still\, f or all the task’s complexity\, Abimbola and Pai insist that we must strive to "rise up and live up" to the demands of a post-colonial global health mi ssion.
Join Prof. Veena Sriram in conversation with Eugene Richardson\, Farah Shroff\, and Raquel Baldwinson as each panelist d iscusses a distinct approach to decolonizing global health. Drawing on his book\, Epidem ic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Pres s\, 2020)\, Eugene Richardson will assert that public health practices—from epidemiological modeling and out-break containment t o Big Data and causal inference—play an essential role in perpetuating a ra nge of global inequities.
Raquel Baldwinson will arg ue that the ordinary ways in which we talk about “global health” tend to wo rk against decolonization efforts. Focusing on examples of public discourse across a range of Global North settings—including media\, marketing\, scho larship\, and policy—Baldwinson will demonstrate how an underlying colonial grammar insinuates real coloniality.
Farah Shroff w ill advocate an epistemic shift in global health praxis – focusing\, in par ticular\, on the imperative for anti-racist decolonial approaches to well-b eing. Shroff will attend especially to the promises and possibilities of in ternational indigenous systems of health promotion and disease prevention.< /p>
Welcome remarks are provided by Rutu Patel\, student in the Master of Pu blic Policy and Global Affairs program\, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs\, UBC.
Moderator’s Bio: Veena Sriram i
s an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Public P
olicy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) and the School of Population and Public He
alth (SPPH) at the University of British Columbia. She has led the design a
nd execution of qualitative research funded by the U.S. National Institutes
of Health (Fogarty International Center and the Agency for Healthcare Rese
arch and Quality)\, the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research\, a
nd the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has also consulted for the Wo
rld Health Organization. Her research sits at the intersection of global he
alth\, social science and public policy\, and her interests are in understa
nding power and politics in health policy processes in low- and middle-inco
me countries. Her work has been published in interdisciplinary journals suc
h as Social Science and Medicine\, BMJ Global Health\, an
d Health Policy and Planning.
Speakers’ Bios:
Eugene Rich
ardson is Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine
at Harvard University and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Division
of Global Health Equity with Harvard Medical School at the Brigham and Wome
n's Hospital. Dr. Richardson previously served as the clinical lead for Par
tners In Health’s Ebola response in Kono District\, Sierra Leone\, where he
continues to conduct research on the social epidemiology of Ebola virus di
sease and COVID-19. He also worked as a clinical case management consultant
for the WHO’s Ebola riposte in Beni\, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mo
re recently\, he was seconded to the Africa CDC to join their COVID-19 resp
onse. His overall focus is on biosocial approaches to epidemic disease prev
ention\, containment\, and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of this
effort\, he is co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redist
ributive Justice and co-chair of the BMJGH Commission on Epistemic Injustic
e.
Raqu
el Baldwinson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English
with a specialization in Science and Technology Studies at the University
of British Columbia. She is also a Liu Scholar at the Liu Institute for Glo
bal Issues. Through the support of the Killam Doctoral Scholarship and the
Friedman Award for Scholars in Health\, Baldwinson completed a four-year Vi
siting Fellow appointment in the Department of History of Science at Harvar
d University.
Baldwinson's dissertation\, "Global Health Doubt: Belie f and the Grammars of Global Health\," tells the story of how\, at the turn of the new millennium\, societies were presented with a new grammar for so cial action called “global health”—but publics did not “believe” in it. Bal dwinson theorizes that\, just as global climate change efforts have been ob structed by a condition of denial\, global health efforts have been obstruc ted by a condition of doubt. Baldwinson is also the author of the forthcomi ng work\, “Global Health Wars: A Rhetorical Review of Global Health Critiqu e.”
F<
strong>arah M. Shroff is a Takemi Fellow in International Health a
t the Harvard School of Public Health\, an Associate of the University of B
ritish Columbia Department of Family Practice and the School of Population
and Public Health\, and a Canadian public intellectual with expertise in gl
obal public health research and education. Dr. Shroff is the founder of Mat
ernal and Infant Health Canada (MIHCan)\, a global public health collaborat
ive that focuses on improving the lives of women and children through educa
tion\, research\, and innovation.
Dr. Shroff's research coheres aroun d the goals of envisioning and developing “Health for All.” Her main areas of research are integrative health approaches and social/environmental just ice from a feminist anti-racism lens. She is a women’s health researcher an d educator with a focus on gender equity\, reproduction\, midwifery\, HIV\, sexuality\, and mental well-being. Unusual in global health work\, Dr. Shr off is also known for her promotion and practice of Ayurveda\, yoga\, medit ation\, nature immersion ("Shinrin-yoku" in Japan and "salim yok" in Korea) \, and other natural forms of health promotion and disease prevention. Dr. Shroff is regularly featured in the media and had a television spot called “Dr. Shroff Talks about Holistic Health.” The CBC/Radio-Canada currently fe atures Dr. Shroff as their public health expert.
Find a copy of Eugen e Richardson’s book\, Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press\, 2020)\, on MIT Press.
Co-hosted by: The Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies\; The School of Public Policy and Global Affairs\, UBC
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