Our Commitment
As I reflect on Black History Month 2021, I want to restate our commitment to anti-racism and equity in our department and our community at large. What we have all witnessed the over the past many years, and particularly the last year, has been traumatic, triggering, and so painful for so many of our friends and colleagues. Our mission, reflecting that of Yale School of Medicine, is to support a diverse community within Pediatrics that is empowered to transform health care and medical science. We strive to create an inclusive community of faculty, staff, and students whose voices and contributions are valued and respected in an environment of collaboration, innovation, and inspiration. Some of our own department members have published research on how the pandemic has laid bare the inequalities of who is more likely to get sick or die from COVID-19 and how systemic racism plays a role in all of this. We have all been awakened to the numerous inequities Black Americans and other persons of color face daily. I am here to recommit ourselves as allies and accomplices and affirm ourselves in our anti-racism. I am here to celebrate Black History with you.
Marietta Vázquez, MD, FAAP
Vice-Chair, Diversity Equity and Inclusion
Department of Pediatrics
Black History Month
Black History Month is celebrated in February because of Carter G. Woodson, known as the “Father of Black History.” Woodson proposed a national “Negro History Week" in 1926 which was meant encapsulate everything students learned about Black history throughout the school year. During the height of the civil rights movement in 1976, President Gerald Ford expanded the week into what we now celebrate as Black History Month. The week in February was originally chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, a famed abolitionist who escaped from slavery, and President Abraham Lincoln, who formally abolished slavery.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) highlighted six Black pediatricians who helped innovate medicine and public health : Doris L. Wethers, MD, FAAP, the third African American woman to graduate from Yale School of Medicine; Melvin E. Jenkins Jr, MD, FAAP, the longtime chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at Howard University; Joycelyn Elders, MD, FAAP, the first African American woman Director of the Arkansas Department of Health; Renee Rosalind Jenkins, MD, FAAP, the first African American president of both the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and the AAP; Alonzo deGrate Smith, MD, FAAP, a professor of pediatrics at Howard University and child health activist; and Roland B. Scott, MD, FAAP, an internationally known researcher of sickle cell disease and activist. Though this is obviously a tiny sample of all the incredible contributions of Black physicians and healthcare workers, their groundbreaking achievements cannot be understated. I hope you will click on the thread to learn more about their work and advocacy.
Events and Education
It’s our job as allies and accomplices to do the work and continue learning. Here are some opportunities to do so.
The Yale Alumni Academy is hosting a virtual event tonight, Thursday, February 25 at 4 p.m. called Daughters of the Movement , featuring seven women whose parents turned the tide of American history. The Daughters sat at the feet of those who were on the front lines of The African American Civil Rights Movement. Join a conversation with the daughters of Harry and Julie Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Bill Lynch, Al Sharpton, Malcolm X and the granddaughter of Percy Sutton, moderated by Yale Associate Professor of African American Studies, History and American Studies Crystal Feimster. Tuition of $25 or donation, free for students, Yale staff, and those needing financial aid.
The Yale School of Medicine’s Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion also has a list of anti-racism resources including, books, podcasts, films, videos, and social media channels you can follow, to help educate yourselves on America’s racist history and how to be an anti-racist.
AAP’s Healthy Children pulled together a list of the best ways to use books to talk with kids about race and racism, including a list of book suggestions for every age group.
LaGarrett J. King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Missouri suggests BlackPast.org as another great educational tool for students and adults. It provides the public with comprehensive, reliable, and accurate information concerning the history of African Americans in the United States and people of African ancestry in other regions of the world. It is the aim of the founders and sponsors to foster understanding through knowledge in order to generate constructive change in our society.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. also has free virtual exhibitions you can visit while they’re temporarily closed and you can check out their calendar for other upcoming virtual events.
At Yale Pediatrics
Within the Department, we’re committed to holding events and space for learning and growth around racial justice and equity, including a recent screening of the film Black Men in White Coats, that was followed by a group discussion and calls-to-action. Another event recently held called “Take a Breather,” led by Dr. Jessica Malcolm and Dr. Darnna Banks modeled after Morbidity & Mortality conferences, used real encounters in our workplace involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and racism. We will have another in depth anti-racism seminar for leaders of our residency and fellowship programs next month.
We are also extremely fortunate to have Dr. Ray Bignall of Nationwide Children’s Hospital as a guest speaker at our anti-racism grand rounds on March 12, titled: "What kids and kidneys can teach pediatricians about systemic racism is America.” We hope you will join us for that!
What may come, we will weather it together. May the lessons and values of this month not end on the 28th but continue throughout the rest of the year; because Black History is American history.
