Partnering to address anti-Black racism in West Toronto
Systemic anti-Black racism is a pervasive issue in health care. A 2013 report by Toronto Public Health noted that two-thirds of racialized survey participants in Toronto experienced discrimination because of their race, ethnicity, or culture. Experiencing racial discrimination has been tied to poorer health outcomes. Toronto’s Black residents report higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, pain and discomfort compared to non-racialized people.
As shared in Part 1 of this story, Keddone Dias, Executive Director of LAMP Community Health Centre (CHC), has been leading efforts to address anti-Black racism within LAMP CHC. Keddone joined us to talk about collaborating with service providers in the West Toronto and Mississauga Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) and the importance of partnership to build sustainable change.
What are some of the ways you are partnering with service providers in West Toronto and Mississauga to address anti-Black racism?
Dipti Purbhoo, the Executive Director for Dorothy Ley Hospice, and I have been working on health equity issues in partnership with a number of organizations in Mississauga and West Toronto and we thought, ‘Why don't we bring these different groups together?’
By working together, the information gets further faster.
Right now, we are revising an anti-Black racism survey that we have used at LAMP Community Health Centre (CHC) for the West Toronto and Mississauga Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) to use and share among their member organizations. The original survey was developed by a group of passionate people and served an important purpose at LAMP CHC – now we need to make sure it can serve other health and community service organizations as well.
Conducting the survey can help highlight areas that organizations could work on and help them create an action plan. The ultimate goal is for people to take action.
Can you tell us about the work that you are doing to address anti-Black racism in health institutions across Toronto?
I have been working with the Toronto Region on their anti-racism framework, which ladders up to the Ontario Health Equity, Inclusion, Diversity and Anti-Racism Framework. I am one of the co-chairs of the education and training pillar of the framework with partners from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
Our goal is to make sure education and training materials are accessible for health and community care organizations and that they are in the best position for the training to be effective. A big part of that is supporting organizations to understand where they are in their journey and the best next step. For example, if your team hasn’t engaged with health equity issues previously, you may need to start with a broader diversity, equity and inclusion conversation instead of diving into a very specific anti-Black racism conversation right away.
As part of this work with the Toronto Region, we will be leveraging an anti-Black racism training series we developed at LAMP CHC. Since its inception, we have received many requests to offer the training series to other organizations but, up until now, we haven’t had the resources to offer that. Now we’re going to build a roster of facilitators who can make themselves available to organizations for training.
What are the grounding principles behind this education and engagement work?
There needs to be an openness to discomfort. Often members of Black communities sanitize what they are saying because they don't want to create discomfort. I think all of us need to be okay with and be open to discomfort around these kinds of issues – that’s how we learn.
Another key piece for me is optimism. Sometimes it's hard to feel optimistic when you’re facing down these big issues but, if we don't feel like things can get better, that colours our approach to the work. It’s important to start from a place where you feel and know and believe that we can do better.
With optimism, you also need commitment. How do we turn this moment into a movement? And how do we keep that movement going?
The collaborative work we are doing right now is incredibly important, and can be that game changer to help us sustain anti-Black racism efforts when it's no longer in the news and on everyone’s mind. By putting anti-Black racism into policy and putting all of these foundational pieces in place – over time we're going to see the needle move forward and avoid feeling like we’re taking one step forward and then two steps back.
Note: Answers in this article were condensed and edited for clarity.
Special acknowledgement: There are many people from the West Toronto OHT, Mississauga OHT, The Mississauga Health Equity Community of Practice, all the staff at LAMP CHC and so many more that are contributing to this very important work. There are too many people to name but we want to acknowledge all of their incredible commitment and efforts to advance anti-Black racism in our community.