Race and Health Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode is a part of a mini series, featuring episodes from Global Health Lives. 

In this episode, Dr Michelle Morse talks about her work fighting for racial justice and health equity in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic. Michelle is the Chief Medical Officer of the New York City Department of Health. Michelle is also a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on racism and child health.

Listen to GHL at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/globalhealthlives

Welcome back to the Race & Health Podcast! We hope you enjoyed Series 3, our collaboration with The Lancet Voice podcast. As we gear up for Series 4, we're thrilled to introduce you to our new mini series: Global Health Lives. This series dives into the inspiring stories of individuals dedicated to global health, with a spotlight on champions of racial and health justice. Hosted by Delan Devakumar, these episodes promise to inform and inspire. Listen to GHL at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/globalhealthlives

In this Series 2 finale, Envisioning Environmental Equity, we revisit interviews conducted at COP27. Part 2 of our COP27 Reflections is both a look back into the conference, and a review of the recent Bonn Climate Conference, and a look forward to COP28. Delan is joined by Sonora English, a Research Assistant at UCL and together, they process the perspectives of people from around the world as they hare their perspectives on the profound impact of climate change on public health and justice. Contributors include Maria Neria, Director of the Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health Department of the World Health Organization (WHO), Brazilian climate justice activists, Adriani Maffioletti, and more.

Last November, members of Race & Health attended COP27 to discuss the intersection between racism, colonialism, climate change, and health. In this special two-part episode, we discuss our reflections on this experience. In Part 1, speakers from our previous episode on young climate activists rejoin us for our milestone event to discuss their perspectives on COPs. 

Jon Bonifacio is an activist, musician, National Coordinator at Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment, and former National Coordinator of YACAP.

Heizal Nagginda is a climate and environmental activist from Uganda. She is the founder  of Climate Operation a youth-led organisation that educates Ugandan  children about climate change as well as involve them in climate related  activism in form of tree planting activities.

Priscila Sato, is a Lecturer at the School of Nutrition of the Federal University of Bahia, Race & Health collective member.

Learn more about the Envisioning Environmental Equity project here. Watch our films here. 

Transcription available here.

What is racism? How does it work and what impact does it have on our health? 

On this special episode of the Race & Health Podcast, jointly hosted by The Lancet Voice, Delan joins co-Founder Sujitha Selvarajah, former UN Special Rapporteur on Racism Tendayi Achiume, and physician and medical anthropologist Gideon Lasco discuss their work on the Lancet Series on racism, xenophobia, discrimination and health. This Series draws connections between power, politics, colonialism, and our health, governed through health systems, our environemnt and communities, and our relationship with law, policies, and institutions. Learn more about this Series on the podcast, or find the Series in its entirey on https://thelancet.com. 

Click here for the episode transcript.

Trauma, grief, and mental health: climate change is disrupting our relationship with the environment as we know it, causing a sense of loss, sudden detachment, and depression - a set of experiences some refer to as solastalgia. In this episode of Race & Health, we discuss mental health and solastalgia with Land Body Ecologies (LBE), a research group that explores this concept with the Ogiek (Kenya), tribal communities in the buffer zone around the Bannerghatta National Park (India), northern Finnish border region communities including the Sámi, and the Batwa (Uganda). We hone into the colonial habits of intended solutions to climate change, such as conservation projects, and how resulting forced displacement has produced more harm for traditional and land dependent communities.

Babitha George is an LBE partner at Quicksand, and is one of the co-founders of the UnBox Festival, leading on networks and collaborations bringing together efforts around social change, art and culture, thoughtful design and open research. IG: @BabeGeorge , @QuickSandStudio | Twitter: @UnwindingBlues , @HelloQS

Daniel Kobei  is the founder and Executive Director of Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program (OPDP), an NGO in Kenya that promotes the human and land rights of the indigenous Ogiek and a core team member of the Land Body Ecologies project. Twitter: @kobskobei , @OgiekPeoples | IG: @ogiekpeoplesdevprogram

Samrawit Gougsa is Head of Communications at Minority Rights Group International, an NGO working to safeguard the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide. She is interested in the social determinants of health among marginalised communities, and the intersection between land rights and mental health. Website: https://minorityrights.org/ | IG: @MinorityRightsGroup | Twitter: @SamGougsa , @MinorityRights

Land Body Ecologies: IG: @LandBodyEcologies | Twitter: @LBecologies

Colonialism persists in many ways, including how waste is managed. In this episode, we discuss the relationship between waste colonialism, the climate crisis, and how these processes produce negative health outcomes for vulnerable communities predominantly in the global South. Join Alice Mah from the University of Warwick, Angelo Luow from Greenpeace, and Sonora English from Race & Health as they discuss how waste colonialism increases the production of plastic, the role of corporate power and the fossil fuel industry, and the social structures that perpetuate exposure to waste.

Alice Mah is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, with research interests in environmental justice, corporate power, and toxic pollution. Her latest book is called Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do About It.

Angelo Louw is an award-winning documentarian and climate justice activist. He is the Pan-African Plastic Project Lead at Greenpeace.

Sonora English is a member of the Race & Health collective and a research assistant at UCL where she works on the Envisioning Environmental Equity initiative, a climate and racial justice collaboration.

The relationship between climate change and migration is complex. In this episode of the R&H Podcast, we discuss these complexities from an anti-discrimination perspective. How does racism, xenophobia, and discrimination define health inequalities in migrant communities, when does migrant status matter, and what can the health community do about this? Explore these questions with our guests, Báltica Cabieses, Maya Goodfellow, and R&H rep, Rita Issa, who brings expertise about migrant access to healthcare, conceptualising the “climate migrant”, and the health inequalities migrants face amidst the climate crisis.

Báltica Cabieses is a nurse midwife and professor at Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile and former Co leader of Launced migration for Latin America.

Maya Goodfellow is a Leverhume Early Career Researcher at the University of Sheffield. She is also author of the book, Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats.

Rita Issa is a UK-based physician doing research on climate change, migration, and health.

For more information about R&H's work, including our newsletter centred on migration, visit www.raceandhealth.org, and follow us on social media @RaceAndHealth

This episode explores how unequal health outcomes for minoritised communities are influenced by air pollution.Touching on causes and sources of air pollution, city design, measurement and research, Dr Anne Dorotheé Slovic from the University of São Paulo, Ms Lilian Latinwo-Olajide from Impact on Urban Health, and Dr Chetna Sharma from Race & Health discuss how structural racism is a driving force behind these unequal outcomes, and what climate justice means for our climate action in this space.

Anne is an Adjunct Professor at the University of São Paulo School of Public Health who specialises in comparative urban studies, with an emphasis on global environmental health, sustainable public policy, and reducing inequalities. 

Lilian is a Portfolio Manager at Impact on Urban Health. She co-leads the Amplifying voices programme strand on the health effects of Air Pollution. 

Chetna is a medical doctor, training to be a public health specialist in London. She works with the Research and Public Engagement teams at Race & Health, and her areas of interest lie in climate and health justice, and intergenerational mental health.

In this episode, we explore the role of young people in the move against climate change, and the work they're doing to promote climate justice. Joined by Heizal Nagginda, founder of Climate Operation in Uganda, Priscila Sato, a researcher from the University of São Paolo, and Jon Bonifacio from Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP), host Delan Devakumar grapples with the role that climate education, justice, and advocacy by young people can have on equitably addressing climate change.