Events & Calendars Redefining Health: Building Skills for Radical Healthcare Workshop Series

The Department of Health Education and SHES present a new workshop series on health equity! Co-sponsored with Your Embodied Sexuality (YES!), we will offer monthly workshops that expand our understandings of health and provide skills for navigating healthcare and the systems of oppression that shape it. Workshop topics will include self-managed abortion care, medical fatphobia, medical racism, misogyny in healthcare, birth control information and how to perform your own breast and pelvic exams, gender affirming healthcare, medical ableism, death positivity and planning, and more. (Registration required: sign up link will be available on the Daily Mammoth during the week leading up to each workshop.) Contact she@amherst.edu with additional questions.

February 20 at 3pm EST: Building Abortion Knowledge for Self and Community Care
Facilitated by Women’s Medical Fund’s Seneca Joyner and Brittany Chung
Come join the folks at the Women’s Medical Fund and YES! for a skill-building workshop on abortion care! The interactive workshop will offer helpful information on how to care for yourself and others before, during, and after an abortion. We will be working together to expand our understanding of the differences between various abortion methods and sharing knowledge in order to better equip ourselves and our loved ones. We’ll be looking at accessing and experiencing abortion care as whole people who are part of vital, complex communities. The workshop will be a liberation-focused space and an opportunity to discuss the realities of abortion openly and honestly.

March 20 at 3pm EST: Don’t Tell Me to Lose Weight: Navigating and Challenging Medical Fatphobia
Facilitated by Isy Abraham-Raveson
The so-called “obesity crisis” is a fatphobic myth that constructs fatness as a disease that needs to be eliminated for the good of society. In fact, fatness is not correlated to disease, and dieting to lose weight isn’t sustainable and can lead to major health problems. On top of that, this misinformation, along with discrimination and shame, prevents people in large bodies from accessing the healthcare they need. In this workshop we will challenge commonplace myths about fatness and health and develop self-advocacy strategies to use when faced with fatphobia in healthcare settings.

April 17 at 3pm EST: Subverting the Master’s Tools: Effective Strategies for Navigating Racism in Medical Care
Facilitated by Michelle Munyikwa
In this workshop, we will review the concept of medical racism and discuss its implications for folks seeking care in the medical system. After a brief review of the history and politics of racism in American healthcare, we will move on to more applicable concepts. Drawing on the experiences of the presenter and advice from local activist groups, we will discuss concrete strategies for engaging in self-advocacy and advocacy for loved ones navigating a complex, racist system.

May 15 at 3pm EST: Fertile Wounds: An Exploration of Misogyny in Medicine
more information TBD