Join us for the first ever Intersectionality and Public Health Symposium at the University of Chicago on May 7, 2021. This event is presented by the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab at the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago, in collaboration with the Village, the Chicago Center for HIV Elimination, and the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research.

Fully virtual, the event aims to connect population health with intersectional thinking through a collection of presentations, speaker insights, and roundtable discussions. We proposed a retreat/symposium to better understand, discuss, and extend the intersectionality conceptual model that’s already well established at an individual level, to the population level, for better translation of these complex and nuanced topics. To learn more about connections with geographic & GIScience thinking, read more on our motivations.

Speakers at the event will include keynote Mia Keeys, MA, DrPH(c) (Director of Health Equity Policy & Advocacy at the American Medical Association), interdisciplinary sociocultural scientist Herukhuti Sharif Williams, PhD, MEd., and health/medical geographer Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD. Learn more about symposium guests here.

Abstracts for short talks at the symposium (first round) are now due on April 16. We hope to connect with other public health researchers and community members to better develop capacity of better:

• Understanding intersectionality
• Sharing, exchanging, and refining resources with a public health focus
• Examining how to integrate intersectionality in quantitative modeling, including issues of dealing with disparities in data, bias in data collection, complexity of measurement, and ethical + appropriate approaches for evaluation. What would best practices look like?
• How do we do research to support and empower communities effectively in an intersectional framing?
• How are trauma informed approaches best integrated?
• How do we model/identify these intersections across COVID, Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), HIV and HCV Syndemics, Racial, Ethnic, and Immigrant Experiences, Sexuality/Gender Experience, Rural/Suburban/Urban Landscapes, or Differing Abilities? Or concepts not identified here?

We keep the intellectual process open by engaging participants to submit ideas to drive conference direction, including questions for speakers and panelists; submit readings to be incorporated in the collective intersectionality primer; and opening presentation topics, and roundtable discussion participation, to interested researchers, health professionals, students, and community members.

We need to continue building networks and capacity across disciplines and sectors. We hope that this retreat/symposium connects these important topics and communities to continue the important work of public health and health, racial, spatial, and social equity.

You can also get involved with the event in many other ways:

• Register for the event. The symposium is free, virtual, and open to the community — though you do need to register to receive the meeting link.
• Help shape the event. We invite you to suggest questions and topics that will be asked to speakers and panelists via our interactive Padlet board.
• Learn more. Through this symposium and our ongoing work, we seek to address questions such as: “How can we thoughtfully, meaningfully, and appropriately integrate more intersectional frameworks to underpin, drive, and challenge public health research methods?”

Join us on May 7 to join this important conversation. Feel free to invite others in your network that may be interested in participating or speaking about their work. Please let us know if you have any questions (email Marynia: [email protected]).