Going Beyond the Data: Using Testimonies to Humanize Pedagogy on Black Health

Abstract

When health professions learners' primary pedagogical experience of Black people and how they become patients is through statistics, it becomes very easy for learners to think of Black people as data points rather than as individuals whose health is often at the mercy of racist institutions. When the human dimension of Black people's health is ignored, specifically the ways that poor health affects individual wellbeing, one of the barriers to proper health for Black patients is how to be seen and considered as a part of a larger problem of systemic racism and institutional injustices as well as individuals whose personal lives are affected by such larger problems. I propose an approach to health professions pedagogythe experiential race testimonies (ERT) approach-that can change the way health professions learners understand and treat Black patients, thus changing the future of Black health. The ERT approach pairs population data analysis with analysis of personal testimonies and the experiences they convey.

A strengths-based approach to exploring diabetes management in an Indigenous minority population: A mixed methods study

“…Critical interactionist analytical approaches also use narratives to facilitate shifting the discourse away from the dominant academic/social voice and centering the perspectives of marginalized groups, so that 'their lived experience becomes the vehicle through which new knowledge is not only created but also made relevant to the communities of concern' [37:499]. Narrative-and storytelling-methods are increasingly being used in public health research [40][41][42][43][44] because they enable healthcare providers and policy makers to virtually experience, and thus better understand and address, the multi-level effects of social determinants on their patients' lives, health, and healthcare experiences [13,14,[42][43][44][45]. The results of the quantitative multivariable analyses also supported the connections described by focus group participants between socioeconomic, psychological, health, and healthcare system factors and the healthcare access, economic barrier, health behavior and mental health outcomes we examined.…”

Black Bioethics in the Age of Black Lives Matter

“…This makes it harder for some people to understand how living as a Black person who frequently encounters racism contributes to racial disparities in health. Stories about Black people's health and their experiences in the world, however, demonstrate their fragile and often violent relationship with systems and institutions (Ray 2021a). But the storyteller also matters.…”

“…For instance, we cannot tell the story of Black people's health without including environmental racism. It is environmental racism-that is, disproportionately building, maintaining, and poorly regulating the facilities that emit toxins in neighborhoods predominantly populated with Black (Latin and Indigenous) families-that contributes to higher rates of asthma among Black people, specifically Black children, not Black people's unwillingness to go to the doctor (Ray 2021b). But if the dominant story is that Black people are sick because of their own moral failings and not the failings of the institutions around them, then institutions like environmental health agencies and corporations who own and operate cancer-causing, toxin-emitting facilities do not have to be held responsible for the damage they cause to Black people's health.…”

Intersectionality as a tool for clinical ethics consultation in mental healthcare

“…Ethics consultants may thus benefit from further trainings, such as the Structural Competency Training (Table 2 ), or implicit bias trainings [ 79 ]. In the context of racism, Experiential Race Testimonies [ 80 ] competency trainings aiming at deconstructing Whiteness [ 81 ] are suggested.…”