Georgia Tech’s Race and Racism in Biomedicine Group Hosts Event on Health Impacts of Mass Incarceration

Posted October 2, 2017

Georgia Institute of Technology’s Race and Racism in Biomedicine Group hosted the event “Health Impacts of Mass Incarceration” on October 2, 2017, at the Clay Theater Student Success Center. The event was sponsored by the Working Group on Race and Racism in Contemporary Biomedicine with the generous support of GT-FIRE, College of Sciences, and Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Working Group co-founder Anne Pollock, associate professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) at Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, together with Working Group alum Melissa Creary (now at Michigan) and fall 2016 invited speaker Jonathan Metzl (Vanderbilt), convened a two-part open panel on “Racism and Health.”

Jennifer Singh, assistant professor in the School of History and Sociology (HSOC) at Georgia Tech, co-convened an open panel on autism, on which she presented her research on autism inequalities. Renee Shelby, doctoral student at HSOC, also presented on techno-physical feminism.

Additional features include Evelyn Patterson (Vanderbilt University); Starla Hairston-Blanks (Morehouse School of Medicine); Xochitl Bervera (Racial Justice Action Center).

Evelyn J. Patterson is an associate professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Demography, and Social Science Research.

Starla Hairston-Blanks is the director of Community Voices: Healthcare for the Underserved of Morehouse School of Medicine, which is dedicated to addressing health disparities, research, policy and practice.

Xochitl Bervera is a lawyer, organizer, and movement builder. She is the director of the Atlanta-based Racial Justice Action Center, which is home to the Solutions Not Punishment Coalition and Women on the Rise.

For more information on the event, visit the Race and Racism in Biomedicine Working Group’s website.