In recognition of National Minority Health Month, the Colorado School of Public Health will host a Minority Health Summit on April 29 at Colorado State University.

The interactive, full-day event, which will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Lory Student Center North Ballroom, will highlight health issues of concern for people of color. The keynote speaker is Dayna Bowen Matthew, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow and professor at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder and in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at CU Anschutz.

Her talk will focus on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and the impacts of systemic unconscious racism as it relates to population health.

Discrimination research

Bowen Matthew has studied the ravaging effects of unconscious racism on health disparities in the health care system for more than a decade. Her book Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care analyzes the evidence that people of color live sicker and die more quickly than whites do in the United States due to health care discrimination based on race, color and national origin.

Her summit keynote, “Lessons from Flint: The Long-Term Impact on Population Health of Systemic Unconscious Racism,” will challenge the public health community to turn its attention to unconscious racism’s devastating impacts on population health around the nation. Bowen Matthew will discuss the scope and scale of unconscious racial bias that permeates social determinants of health — the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age — that condemn poor and minority communities to inferior health in the United States.

Additional speakers

The summit agenda includes panel discussions and presentations on minority health trends in Colorado as well as efforts to eliminate disparities through the promotion of equity. Speakers include:

• Evelinn Borrayo, director, Latino Research and Policy Center, Colorado School of Public Health
• Ernest Chavez, College of Natural Sciences – Psychology, Colorado State University
• Edgar Dominguez, Health Equity Coordinator, Vida Sana
• Carol Kaufman, Associate Professor of Community & Behavioral Health, Colorado School of Public Health
• Crystal LoudHawk, Center for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, Colorado School of Public Health
• Steve Okiyama, Colorado State University Health Network
• Terri Richardson, Kaiser Permanente, Colorado Black Health Collaborative
• Shawn Taylor, Healthy Babies Strong Families Program, Families Forward Resource Center
• Irene Vernon, head of the Ethnic Studies Department, Colorado State University
• Christine Wanifuchi, Asian Pacific Development Center

Other presentations

The summit will end with panel discussions and presentations about health equity policy and advocacy from other speakers:

• Will Dickerson, Together Colorado
• Sarah Hernandez, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
• Arlene Nededog, director of inclusion, College of Natural Sciences, Colorado State University
• Cynthia Negron, Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR)
• Nicole Tuitt, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, Colorado School of Public Health
• Patricia Vigil, CSU University Partnerships and Student Services

Visit the Minority Health Summit event webpage for more information.

The Colorado School of Public Health is the first and only accredited school of public health in the Rocky Mountain region, attracting top-tier faculty and students from across the country, and providing a vital contribution toward ensuring our region’s health and wellbeing. Collaboratively formed in 2008 by Colorado State University, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Northern Colorado, the Colorado School of Public Health provides training, innovative research and community service to actively address public health issues including chronic disease, access to healthcare, environmental threats, emerging infectious diseases and costly injuries. Learn more and follow ColoradoSPH’s updates on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.