Keynote Speaker David R. Williams of Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health with Robert Taylor, Harold R. Johnson Professor of Social Work, Sheila Feld Collegiate Professor of Social Work, and faculty associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research.
LEON AND JOSEPHINE WINKELMAN MEMORIAL LECTURE ENCOURAGES ACTION ON RACIAL INEQUITIES IN HEALTHCARE
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n March 19, at U-M’s Institute for Social Research, the School of Social Work held its 33rd annual Leon and Josephine Winkelman Memorial Lecture, a forum for presenting emerging knowledge in gerontology from the social sciences and the helping professions. David R. Williams, of Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, delivered the keynote lecture, “Reducing Racial Inequities in Health: Using What We Already Know to Take Action.” Dean Lynn Videka hailed Williams, a St. Lucian and American social scientist specializing in social influences on health, as “one of Michigan’s own,” as he received his PhD in sociology at U-M and served on the U-M faculty for 14 years. Williams discussed how institutional racism and racial bias exacerbate inequities in American healthcare. He used the term “empathy gap” to describe how health professionals understand Black pain and suffering as less acute or important than pain suffered by whites. Poor health and healthcare for people of color is also tied to poverty, high infant mortality, poor housing and unfair housing policies, aging and ageism. Williams sees a partial solution to these problems in the creation of “communities of opportunity,” advanced
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by business and nonprofit partnerships that help residents build or preserve affordable housing, thrive and become healthier. Dismantling the culture of racism, Williams said, must be part of the training and mentoring of the next generation of healthcare leaders. “Empathy can be changed,” he concluded. The Winkelman Memorial Lecture Series was established at the School of Social Work with an endowed gift from the Winkelman brothers— Stanley J., John, Frederick R. and Henry R.—as a memorial to their parents, Leon and Josephine Winkelman. Leon Winkelman cofounded the Winkelman’s department stores in Detroit in 1928. Josephine Winkelman was a 1919 graduate of the U-M Social Work program and a social worker at Chicago’s Hull House. Words of Jane Addams, cofounder of Hull House, could be an epigram for this year’s Winkelman Lecture: “We stand today united in a belief in beauty, genius, and courage, and that these can transform the world.” Or, as the U-M School of Social work puts it, “Reach out. Raise hope. Change society.”