Continued Reflections

 It's been a few months since I have posted here. Actually, it has been a lot longer than I thought. In recent months I have found writing and posting content more of a challenge. I have thoughts, but they seem all over the place and I struggle to form something substantial and coherent. As a commitment to myself to keep this blog going I am sharing a few of the Health Equity Reflections that I provided on a weekly basis. 

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“While individual-level interventions are beneficial, characterizing them as efforts to address social determinants of health conveys a false sense of progress” (Castrucci and Auerbach, 2019). As behavioral health leaders, we have a solid understanding of the multiple factors that contribute to an individual’s overall health. We understand how the social determinants of health affect an individual’s mental health and wellbeing. Things like poverty, violence, and homelessness have a direct impact on an individual's total health. While there has been a trend to try to address the social determinants of health, we must be careful to avoid thinking that addressing an individual’s needs is impacting the social determinants of health. While we need programs like shelters, food pantries, and clothing drives, we also need policies that address the social conditions that create environments that support inequities. Recall the groundwater approach. To address health inequities and the social determinants of health- we need to focus on the environment (policies and structures) and not just programs that focus on addressing individual need. 

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Change is the only constant in life – Heraclitus. One of the harder aspects of this change is the continual evolution of language. Back in July, we reflected on the term BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). Another term that some are embracing is ‘people of the global majority’. As with other terms – minority and people of color – understanding the aspect of racial identity becomes dependent on comparing it to another group. These terms are also Americanized and are centered on the American experience. People of the global majority is an inclusive term for all non-white people around the world, but also makes racial identity independent of whiteness. Lim states in his article about the term, “it speaks to an identity that is free from being in lesser-than relation to whiteness”. While it may take some time for people to integrate this term into common use, if it is a term that even becomes widely adopted, we begin to see how we even speak about things changes how we think about things. People of the global majority has a much different connotation than referring to someone as a minority or as a person of color.

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November 1^st marks the beginning of National Native American Heritage Month. It is interesting that so many people claim Native American ancestry without fully understanding their ancestry. Families across the United States have lore about being descended from an Indian Princess, most often Cherokee. These families’ stories become ingrained, so much so that few people question their authenticity. In this article the author states, “By claiming a royal Cherokee ancestor, white Southerners were legitimating the antiquity of their native-born status as sons or daughters of the South, as well as establishing their determination to defend their rights against an aggressive federal government, as they imagined the Cherokees had done. These may have been self-serving historical delusions, but they have proven to be enduring”. During Native American Heritage Month, we would do better to recognize the land we call Ohio that was once occupied by many different nations, than to assert some false native identity. Wondering what a land acknowledgement is – check here.