The next session of the MIHE Seminar series presents Dr. Ameil Joseph, who will discuss recent work in Hamilton by community advocates, academics and health leaders to address the impact of COVID-19 on Black and racialized groups.
February 16, 2022 | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Register at: https://bit.ly/3ICT3yw for this free, virtual event.
Talk description:
This session will explore some of the recent, local work to address health inequities in Hamilton. Community advocates, academics, health leaders who are from and serve Black and other racialized and marginalized groups in Hamilton responded to the overwhelming impacts of COVID-19 on marginalized Black and other racialized groups in Hamilton through relational solidarities to serve those most in need, with the knowledge and expertise most capable of such intervention. Through resistance of officials to take action, racist backlash, and problematic organizational and institutional responses to the needs of Black and other racialized communities, advocates and community leaders responded by maintaining focus on community through collective solidarities to engage issues through action. Examples of calls for clinics to prioritize disproportionately impacted group for vaccination and for systemic changes to governance will be explored.
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Dr. Ameil Joseph is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at McMaster University. Ameil currently holds a Professorship in Equity, Identity, and Transformation from the Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University and is the Academic Director of Community-Engaged Research & Relationship with the Office of Community Engagement, also at McMaster University. He draws on perspectives of critical forensic mental health, mad studies, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and critical disability studies to analyze the historical production of ideas about difference, normalcy, sexuality, eugenics, race, ability and mental “illness” as they cohere, diverge, interdepend, and perform within policy, law and practice. Ameil has presented and advocated across Canada, in the US and in Europe on issues related to racism, critical mental health and social justice. Ameil has over a decade of experience in the mental health field in areas of assertive community treatment, community-based early intervention, supportive housing, crisis respite, and governance settings. Ameil is also the author of: Deportation and the confluence of violence within forensic mental health and immigration systems published by Palgrave-MacMillan. A historiographical post-colonial analysis of the practice of deportation in Canada for those identified as “undesirable”.