The Michigan Medicine and Michigan Health Sciences committee hosted their 35th annual Health Science MLK Lecture Monday afternoon in alignment with the University of Michigan’s 39th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium. The event began with a lecture by keynote speaker David R. Williams, followed by a multidisciplinary panel. Williams is a Florence and Laura Norman professor of public health and professor of African and American studies and sociology at Harvard University who earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan.
Nathan Hanke, Michigan Medicine strategy and workforce belonging manager, opened the event with a brief discussion of the history of the lecture as a way to bridge the health sciences schools together at the University.
“The Health Science MLK lecture was established in 1990, known originally as the Dean’s Event,” Hanke said. “Early on, it was a pioneering effort of multidisciplinary and professional partnership, and as that partnership and connection between disciplines grows, so too will the legacy and impact of our work together.”
During the event, Williams highlighted racial disparities in life expectancies in the United States by examining excess deaths. He noted that if there were no racial inequities, approximately 74,000 fewer Black Americans would die each year.
“That’s 203 Black people a day,” Williams said. “Imagine a fully loaded jungle jet with 200 passengers and crew on board and the plane crashing and everybody on board died. Congress would be moving heaven and earth to find out why this happened every single day of the week and every single day next week and next month, but that is what we are talking about when we say there are racial inequities in health.”
Williams also acknowledged the importance of community for public health as a whole. Toward the end of his lecture, he thanked the people who supported and guided him throughout his academic journey.
“I want to mention it takes a village,” Williams said. “It takes a lot of support to make a difference in individuals, so I want to tell you about three African American scholars, all of them with Michigan connections, who had a huge impact on my career.”
Wrapping up his keynote speech and discussing his experiences as a Black scholar working in the medical field, Williams reflected on the community he and his peers created to support themselves as outsiders in their academic journey.
“My success at Michigan was also linked to Black people from this country,” Williams said. “All the Black students, a Hispanic female and an Asian male came together and (we) called ourselves a family. And our motto was, ‘Nobody is going to fall through the cracks.’”
The lecture was followed by a panel discussing interdisciplinary approaches to achieving health equity, moderated by Dr. David J. Brown, Michigan Medicine associate vice president and associate dean for health equity and inclusion. The panel featured Williams, Alfreda Rooks, Michigan Medicine director of community health services; Celeste M. Watkins-Hayes, Joan and Sanford Weill dean of public policy; F. DuBois Bowman, dean of U-M School of Public Health and Olayinka Shiyanbola, U-M professor of pharmacy.
Brown asked the panel a series of questions about the importance of community engagement in public health. Bowman describes how this approach aligned closely with King’s ideology.
“Dr. King was about the collective,” Bowman said. “By definition, public health is about the collective. We promote the health of individuals, but also communities, neighborhoods, populations. It is therefore really impossible to separate that from work with the community have done well, and so we engage at every level with communities.”
Brown also asked about incorporating community feedback into health equity initiatives. Shiyanbola discussed the importance of listening to voices from a variety of communities when planning these initiatives.
“There’s always the notion that we need to do something for the community, without recognizing the community as assets,” Shiyanbola said. “It’s about the power of sharing and giving them the power to be able to make that transformation.”
Elaborating on community engagement and public health, Brown asked the panelists on how they approach issues of “drive-by research,” in which a researcher studies a community temporarily without building trust and then moves on. To address drive-by research, Bowman referenced the 30-year anniversary of the Detroit Urban Research Center, noting their dedication to the betterment of communities, not just the advancement of research.
“The Detroit Urban Research Center will celebrate, in 2025, 30 years,” Bowman said. “And so it’s really about that long-term commitment and being present, showing up, as mentioned, upon completion of a specific project. That’s not the end of the relationship — the partnership should be about more than that.”
Rackham student Bukky Tikare attended the event because of her research interests in healthy equity for cancer patients. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Tikare said she particularly appreciated the emphasis on the importance of working to connect with communities instead of just using them for data.
“The drive-by research; that is something that, if we are not careful as researchers, can happen,” Tikare said. “Not because we set out to do that, but sometimes events, life happens and we just don’t go back. The key takeaway was making a conscious effort, a conscious decision to continue to work with the community, not just to come in and just go when you get your data that you need — to continue to build and foster these relationships.”
Tikare also discussed the importance of the space created by events like the Health Science MLK Lecture in remembering King and furthering racial justice within the natural sciences.
“We need a memorial to remind ourselves why we have to stay the course, why we have to continue to do the work we do, even if it doesn’t get funded in the long run,” Tikare said. “Community events like this remind us of that all the time. We may forget, but it’s a new motivation, a new inspiration to continue to do the work we do because there will be times that there will be challenges.”
Daily Staff Reporter Aanya Panyadahundi can be reached at [email protected].
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