Several of our students attended, and presented at, the annual meeting of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), held this year May 24 – 27, online. What follows is a post from one of the attendees.
By Kimberly Wu, MPH
The theme of this year’s conference highlighted the opportunities to learn from global and local experiences, drawing from efforts of the past year as the world struggled to adapt to the changes of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a first-time attendee of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), I was deeply grateful to be a part of the activities as a presenter for the Student Roundtable Session. Specifically, the inaugural student roundtable sessions were created to allow students to get feedback on their current research projects from other professionals. Therefore, the opportunity to learn alongside three other MCH professionals and benefit from the support of AMCHP staff in preparing and facilitating our sessions was truly invaluable.
For my presentation, I aimed to explore more strength-based frames to conducting public health research through exploring the constructs related to community cultural wealth, a framework that has been used widely in the field of higher education research and policy development (Yosso, 2005). The framework challenges professionals to think beyond the 5D’s of traditional research- disparity, deprivation, disadvantage, dysfunction, and difference (Walter, 2016) by recognizing additional domains of community assets beyond solely considering social capital, ranging from aspirational capital to linguistic capital.
We were all asked to find ways to engage the group in some sort of discussion, and each of the presenters received ample feedback and encouragement from the participants in the room. I currently have lists of researchers, advice, community organizations, and other feedback to sift through to help me in advancing in the preliminary stages of a research project. The experience has certainly taught me to continue in my efforts to find the cultural wealth and resources within our own research communities! You can experience it too, if you choose to apply to join future roundtable sessions (which I highly encourage!).
Kim (Kimberly) Wu, MPH is a rising second-year doctoral student with the department of Global Community Health & Behavioral Science. Kim’s research areas include social determinants of health and the intersection of built environments on adolescent health, mental health, and immigrant health. She finds purpose in learning more about history of where we live and enjoys crafting, writing, and being near any kind of body of water.
References
Walter, M. (2016). Indigenous Data Sovereignty Data politics and Indigenous representation in Australian statistics. In Indigenous Data Sovereignty.
Yosso, T. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of Community Cultural Wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.
