Events News Articles

An Unbroken Thread: The Pursuit of Health, Equity & Racial Justice, by Dr. Mary T. Bassett

Monday, May 13, 2019

On May 1, 2019, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and former commissioner of health for New York City, delivered the annual Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health. In her lecture, titled “An Unbroken Thread: The Pursuit of Health, Equity, and Racial Justice,” she traced the history of the fight for health equity and racial justice back to the slave trade, and connected it to some of today’s pressing health problems, such as maternal mortality rates and the opioid crisis. Dr. Bassett discussed Boston’s history of Black activism, W.E.B. Du Bois’s work on social determinants of health, racist misuse of data, and the effects of racism on health, among other topics. 

The Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health, hosted by the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health, is an annual symposium that addresses vexing health issues, featuring national and international leaders at the intersection of health and social justice.

Watch the video:

 

Photo credit: Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo.