Several of our MPH students attended the 2017 CityMatCH MCH Leadership Conference & Healthy Start Convention, held September 18-20, in Nashville, Tennessee. What follows is a post from one of these attendees.
By Shanice Roach, BSPH
Day 1 started with the first open plenary: Advancing Equity and Human Rights through Reproductive Justice, which was a wonderful opening, to a wonderful conference. The panelists spoke on everything from the criminalization of poverty to the environmental threats. A quote that one of the panelists stated that stayed with Shanice through the whole conference, paraphrasing Audre Lorde, was “we cannot have single issue movements, because we do not live single issue lives.” No matter what Shanice does in life this quote will continue to stay with her. The conference ended with the third plenary: Challenges in Achieving Health Equity: Addressing Implicit Bias, Racial Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat. This plenary explained that implicit bias is something that our brain does automatically even if it does not match what we have explicitly stated. The panelists even discussed the importance of showing different images and not just associating bad habits with African Americans.
Whether it was the cool Nashville air or the fact that everyone at the conference was lost together (in the huge hotel/convention center) at one point or another, this had to be one of the most diverse and inclusive conferences she has ever attended. As a second year Shanice always knew that she would enter the “real world” soon, but it did not sink in until she experienced CityMatCH. Individuals at this conference did not treat her as a student or someone below them, they made her feel like a colleague, as if she was in the field as long as they were. They were all in Nashville together to fight for something they were all passionate about and it was at that moment that she had a calming feeling. She was ready for the MCH world, but was the MCH world ready for her?
Shanice Roache is a second-year MPH student, concentrating in Global Maternal and Child Health. She plans to graduate in May 2018. Her interests include preterm births in African American women, breastfeeding, perinatal/infant health and reproductive justice. She is learning to love working out and enjoys cooking.
