a blurred hospital waiting room

Training tool found to reduce racial bias among healthcare staff

A new online training tool has been shown to be effective in reducing racial bias among staff workers in primary care medical offices, in a study led by Gabriel Tajeu, assistant professor of Health Services Administration and Policy. “Our research group previously had discovered that front desk staff in the healthcare setting—who weren't physicians or registered nurses—were a fairly significant source of perceived discrimination,” Tajeu says. “That can be a barrier to healthcare. Patients who experience discrimination are less likely to follow treatment plans and les...
Health Services Administration and Policy
Research
Racism
Ashley Stewart

Q&A: Ashley Stewart explains how social workers can work against racial injustice and toward social change

For Ashley Stewart, assistant professor of instruction and MSW online program coordinator in the School of Social Work, the profession of social work is in a moment of unprecedented opportunity. She teaches and writes about issues such as race-based traumatic stress and identity-based oppression, and she tells her students that social work is all about social change. The upheavals over equal justice that the nation has been experiencing this year have brought to the forefront conversations about long-standing, racially oppressive social structures and institutions. Social work...
Racism
Faculty
School of Social Work
Social justice
students on campus wearing masks

MLK Day teach-in to explore intersection of race, poverty, and policy

The College of Public Health has received a grant from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to facilitate a college-wide “teach-in” event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2021. Faculty, staff, students and community members will be invited for discussions that focus on policy-level interventions that address the effects of the intersection of race and poverty. The grant also funds development of a webpage focused on these issues with corresponding resources and information. Laurie Friedman, associate professor of instruction in the School of Social Work, noted tha...
School of Social Work
Racism
Health Services Administration and Policy
philadelphia skyline

From the dean: On racism and public health

Recent events have laid bare the effects of centuries of unjust treatment of Black communities in the United States. The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor—among countless others, many of whom will never be known widely—and continued institutional violence aimed at Black individuals are deeply disturbing. At the Temple University College of Public Health, we are committed to social justice and stand in solidarity with those calling for equal rights and positive change. We unequivocally denounce racism, both structural and individualized. It has no plac...
Social justice
Racism