Community Forum: Moving Towards a Racially Just and Equitable Health Research Enterprise

Date: Thursday, July, 2

Time: 4:00pm – 5:00pm via Zoom

To sign up, please fill out this form: https://bit.ly/37Sahaa

This Community Forum will include three short presentations that explore pathways to more racially just and equitable research practice by examining systematic/structural racism in research.

Presentations will focus on recommendations for next steps, followed by a facilitated discussion guided by the question: How can we transform research, with consideration for past and present experiences of racism and marginalization, towards an equitable, healthy, and safe future for everyone?

Moving Health Equity Forward in White Dominant Spaces Workshop

Date: Tuesday, June 30

Time: 12:30pm – 3:00pm

Register at https://tinyurl.com/ForHEWD

Addressing health equity in white dominant spaces presents three specific challenges: understanding the status quo, raising the profile of the problem, and motivating action.
This workshop will focus on building an understanding of the issues involved and the opportunities related to making advances in health equity in white dominant spaces.

Understanding Health and Racial Equity Workshop

Date: Tuesday, June 30

Time: 9:30am – 12:00pm

Register at https://tinyurl.com/PVHRE

This workshop for Pioneer Valley organizations, agencies, collaboratives, and town, city and county departments will examine health and racial equity with an action framework toward real change at the community level. Using real life examples, participants will explore strategies, ally (accomplice) development and upstream policy, systems and environmental change.

June 27 is National HIV Testing Day

This year’s National HIV Testing Day theme is “Knowing,” which highlights the importance of knowing your HIV status, knowing where you can get tested, and knowing how you can connect to care and treatment services if you test positive.

Approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. have HIV, but one in seven people with HIV are unaware they have it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Click here to learn more about National HIV Testing Day.

Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

The World Health Organization has designated 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, highlighting how vital nurses and midwives are to the health and well-being of our global community. In honor of this, NINR would like your help in capturing what nursing research means to those who live it. They are gathering this information to learn more from our community and collectively begin describing the next frontiers in nursing science. Click here to offer your thoughts.

NINR Workshop – Genomic Response to the Social Environment: Implications for Health Outcomes

NINR will host this workshop on Wednesday, June 24 at 10:00am EDT. The event is open to the public and registration is not required.

While it is long recognized that the social environment can influence the risk, manifestation, and trajectory of disease and associated symptoms, the underlying biological mechanisms remain understudied. This trans-disciplinary event will address the relationship among genomics (epigenomics, gene expression, microbiome, telomeres); social environmental factors; and health outcomes across populations, conditions, and the lifespan.

The full agenda and the link to the NIH videocast can be viewed here.

Challenges & Opportunities in Implementing Medication-Based Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in Rural and Mid-Sized County Jails

Date: Monday, June 29, 12:00pm-1:30pm

The O’Neill Institute’s Addiction and Public Policy Initiative, housed at Georgetown University Law Center, presents the above webinar featuring Franklin County MA Sheriff Christopher Donelan; Franklin County House of Corrections Medical Director, Ruth Potee, MD, and Brandon George, Indiana Addiction Issues Coalition. This virtual event will provide a deep dive into the challenges rural and mid-sized counties face in implementing medication-based treatment, as well as opportunities for reform. This interactive session will provide opportunities for state and county leadership to engage with experienced experts from the field on developing successful models, overcoming implementation hurdles, identifying funding, and successful approaches to training and buy-in.

This event is part of the O’Neill Institute’s Applying the Evidence roundtable series that will highlight best practices, challenges, and opportunities in implementing medication-based treatment in correctional facilities. Information on the other roundtables in the series and registration information can be found here.

NINR: Omics to Advance Symptom Science Research

On June 22 from 12:00-3:30 p.m. ET, NINR’s Division of Intramural Research (DIR) will hold a virtual symposium to mark a milestone anniversary — celebrating 20 years of its Summer Genetics Institute (SGI). This will examine how omics methodologies are improving symptom measurement and characterization and will explore how this research is guiding approaches to biobehavioral interventional methods. This event is free of charge, but registration is required.

Digital Divide Dialogue by Baystate Health

Baystate Health and the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts are hosting a virtual community conversation on western Massachusetts’ challenges and response to the digital divide.

Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm (EDT)
Click here to register

There is an urgent need to tackle the sharp digital divide between our community’s online and offline populations, that has further been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The responsibility for addressing digital exclusion lies jointly with public and private organizations, who must come together to ensure that access to essential services isn’t denied to the digitally marginalized.

Inequalities are rooted in race/ethnicity, income and wealth, language and cultural differences, all of which accounts for disparities that intersect with access to education, healthcare, housing, and other social domains. One aspect of the disparity includes access and use of information and communication technology (ICT) and broadly, the concept of the digital divide. The term “digital divide” can be described as the mismatch between access to and use of ICT.

The sponsors request that participants complete a pre-event survey on your current understanding and perspective on the digital divide by Friday, May 22, 2020 to help guide the conversation.

Institute for Healing and Justice in Medicine: Inaugural Webinar and Dialogue

Be part of the national launch of the Institute for Healing and Justice in Medicine and their full report “Towards the Abolition of Biological Race in Medicine: Transforming Clinical Education, Research, and Practice”, by Noor Chadha, Madeleine Kane, Bernadette Lim, and Brenly Rowland.

Date: Wednesday, May 13
Time: 8:00pm – 10:00pm
RSVP at instituteforhealingandjustice.org