Beyond SDOH: The Vital Role of Social Determinants in Whole-Person Health Care
*”Beyond SDOH” is a two-part webinar series. While you do not have to attend both sessions, we recommend attending both for each attendee as Session 1 will contribute to your background knowledge for Session 2. You MUST register for each session individually to attend.
Session 1
January 18
Description:
Discussions around root causes of social, political, and economic inequity have emerged in response to “the perfect storm” of a pandemic, racial unrest, and political divide we experienced in the last few years. Often lacking from these conversations, is the throughline that runs from this country’s foundation to differences across health and life trajectory still at work today that shows up as pervasive power imbalance. We cannot dismantle oppressive systems if we lack knowledge on how they were created in the first place.
This session will help participants:
- Review and get grounded in definitions and concepts beyond the surface to understand equity as a process and practice, not just an outcome,
- Learn about the historical underpinnings of harmful power imbalances we see and experience today, and
- Connect that historic legacy to well-documented racial inequities in health and across every single system, sector and social determinant of health without fail, which are known to impact our health and well-being.
REGISTER
Session 2
January 25
How can we be healthy if we cannot be whole? As humans we have multiple social identities seen and unseen that contribute to who we are and influence our access, opportunities, and the power we hold to create change. In exploring our own identities and learning through relationships with others, we shift closer to the transformation we all deserve. As we make connections and build bridges, we learn that race is not a separate dimension but is a throughline that penetrates all aspects of society as historically rooted power imbalance. Any challenge to structural racism, also challenges relations of power within other forms of oppression that uphold this imbalance.
This session will build upon session #1 to help participants:
- Make connections between race and other aspects of identity such as gender, class, sexuality, ability, etc. by defining intersectionality and reflecting on how our identities relate to power,
- Explore race and racism’s connections to other aspects of identity and systems of inequity, thereby building on Session #1 by encouraging participants to explore their own identities to understand the power they have individually and as part of a collective, and
- Learn how cultural humility and relationship building across identities can be a key strategy for anti-racist/oppressive practice towards self-love, building community, and transformation.
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PRESENTED BY:
Racial/Health Equity Consultant + Coach
Founder, PHREEEDOM, LLC
Jannah Bierens is a Black biracial North Carolina native who uses feminine and non-binary pronouns. As a social justice entrepreneur + founder of PHREEEDOM LLC, she leads with love + joy as a consultant + coach who facilitates dialogue around root causes of oppression, shifting power, and reclaiming narratives for self, systems, and social transformation.
Prior to relocating to Lansing, MI, Jannah spent most of their two-decade public health career in Durham, NC at the local government level. Driven by a deep passion for eliminating historically rooted Black health disparities, they educated, advocated, and organized around opportunities and access to optimal health with communities who’ve been traditionally marginalized, by design. Jannah believes relationships are resistance; that connection, collective justice + healing are critical to honoring shared humanity, realizing our bound liberation, and improved health + life outcomes for all.
A transformational coach with their undergraduate foundation in the study of Exercise Science, Mx. Bierens holds an M.P.H. with graduate certificates in Health Management + Policy and Health Education + Promotion, in addition to their M.A. in Social Justice + Community Organizing. However, it is lived experience + life lessons filtered through generations of Black superwomen that have prepared them most for transforming collectively, in community, to get PHREEE.