At the conclusion of the symposium, attendees should have gained increased awareness of:

• The historically-rooted, systematic, and structural inequities that impact existing health and healthcare disparities
• The field of health humanities and how it encourages an interdisciplinary approach to address current health inequities
• The REPAIR Project, what creating positive change might look like locally and how organizers can start building a coalition in their community

Learn more about Jason Glenn and The REPAIR Project at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Keynote Speaker: Jason E. Glenn

Dr. Jason E. Glenn is an associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine and Executive Director of the REPAIR Project at the University of Kansas Medical Center.  His areas of research specialty include health inequities, mass incarceration, the history of drug policy in the U.S., and the ethics and history of human subject research.  He spent 12 years at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston as the James Wade Rockwell Distinguished Professor in Medical History within the Institute for the Medical Humanities before relocating to KUMC.  While in Galveston Dr. Glenn was also a member of the Center for Addiction Research and a Senior Fellow at the Center to Eliminate Health Disparities.  Dr. Glenn is also a founder and past director of Sobriety High, Inc., a nonprofit organization providing community re-entry services for persons with a history of substance abuse who are returning from prison.  Dr. Glenn is also a co-founder of the Galveston County Restorative Justice Community Partnership and the Galveston County Hope Drug Court.  His current research investigates abusive policing practices as a structural determinant of ill health in so affected communities, and improving the delivery of healthcare for persons who are incarcerated.

Maternal Health Panel

Moderator: Chris Cynn

Chris Cynn, PhD is an associate professor in the Department for Gender, Sexuality and Women’s studies. Her research centers on epidemics as they make visible and exacerbate social, political, and economic conflicts. She is director of the Health Humanities Lab at the Humanities Research Center.

Mary Boyes is an Associate Professor in the Honors College at VCU, where she teaches research writing and creative writing. Boyes creates fiction, poetry, and video for collaborative interactive art installations, ARGs, and community engagement. Boyes’ recent works of community-oriented, transdisciplinary art have appeared at U Mass Amherst, in the Starr Foster Dance Project, and at the Worcester Biennial Art in the Park.

Terri Erwin has a long history of faith-based community organizing. A graduate of William and Mary, Terri is excited to be back in Virginia and eager to meet with student and faculty members interested in getting more involved in advocacy and social justice. Terri leads VICPP’s work engaging seminarians, college students, and other young adults in the work of VICPP. 

Susan Bodnar-Deren, PhD is a medical sociologist whose research focuses on the life course and social determinants of health and health behaviors and the ways that macro-social factors affect individual-level health and well-being. Broadly, her research interests take a life course perspective in the areas of environmental gerontology, applied sociology, health /illness, and social psychology all within medical sociology, but my work spans various sub-disciplines, including behavioral health, health disparities, and social policy

Kenda Sutton-EL is an activist that started raising awareness and creating initiatives for Black Maternal Health In Virginia. Kenda is the Founding Executive Director of Birth In Color. Birth In Color is the leading organization that focuses on care of people of color and implementation of doulas into the workforce.