ABOUT US
At the Medical Humanities and Health Disparities Institute (MHDI) we strive to reduce health disparities by evaluating and actively working against the causality behind social determinants of health and countering normalized ideas and practices that perpetuate health inequities and health disparities. We use this process to help public and private entities, non-profit organizations, and interested individuals work toward more informed and holistic healthcare engagements—thereby helping to improve the health outcomes of minority peoples.
OUR VISION
In the ideal world, health care and all of its tangential factors would not be commodities. Goods and services that afford individuals equitable access to healthy outcomes would be basic human rights. Unfortunately, we don't live in such a place and having a guaranteed right to healthy living is much more of a dream than a reality. It doesn't make it impossible though. Instead, our approach to health and well-being must be one that circumnavigates or confronts the social systems that facilitate and perpetuate health disparities. It is not unattainable or unrealistic. The actualization of health equity is simply a task that must be approached consistently, with intentionality, and occasionally creativity. We move towards this goal one day at a time and one step at a time until positive health outcomes for minority peoples are the new normal.
OUR COMMUNITY
As the facilitation of institutional inequity, structural violence, and racism are a part of socialization, their perpetuation is intergenerational. Concomitantly, the negative health impacts of those systems are also intergenerational. Here, at MHDI, we recognize the significance of taking a holistic approach to ameliorating health inequities and health disparities for the whole community--from the pregnant mother to the tiniest child to the oldest elder. Each generation must be afforded the opportunity for a healthier, deconstructed, dismantled socialization of health outcomes. We work towards this goal one day at a time, one step at a time until health equity and positive health outcomes in minority communities are the foundations of how we are resocialized.
From Bullfrog Films
The following film snippet is from the "The Power to Heal: Power to Heal Medicare and Civil Rights Revolution". It does a great job of outlining some of the structural violences and institutional inequities in the United States that helped to facilitate the production, normalization, and legitimization of health inequities and health disparities here.