Exploring the Need of Social Change Leadership Concerning Health Communication and Health Disparities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In March of 2020, the United States activated nationwide pandemic response protocols due to the swift spread of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019, also known as COVID-19. Amidst the domestic response, urgency surrounded the need to build collective awareness of the signs, symptoms, and preventive measures of the virus. As the virus spread and historically marginalized communities were disproportionately impacted with rates of infection, the need to explore the presence of disparities in health communication, health education, and personal health literacy surfaced. The research contained within this study examines the root cause of the gap in health literacy for communities of color and presents actionable next steps to increase positive healthcare outcomes for all.

Antiracist Curriculum and Digital Platforms: Evidence from Black Lives Matter

In this paper, we examine the impact of racially charged events on the demand for antiracist classroom resources in U.S. public schools. We use book requests made by teachers on DonorsChoose, the largest crowdfunding platform for public school teachers, as a measure of intent to address race-related topics in the classroom. We use the precise timing of high-profile police brutality and other racially charged events in the United States (2010–2020) to identify their effect on antiracism requests relative to a control group. We find a significant increase in antiracism requests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and a null effect for all other events in the decade. We also find an increase in requests for books featuring Latinx, Asian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, suggesting that a focus on equality for one group can spill over and yield culturally aware dialogues for other groups as well. Event studies suggest that local protests played a role in motivating some of the teachers to post these requests. In just four months following George Floyd’s death, $3.4 million worth of books featuring authors and characters from marginalized communities were successfully funded, reaching more than half a million students. Text analysis of impact notes posted by teachers suggests that hundreds of thousands of young students are being engaged in discussions about positive affirmation and cross-cultural acceptance. This paper was accepted by D.J. Wu, information systems.

Diversity and Inclusion Experience of Trans Workers: The Missing Link of Trans-Friendly Environment in Organizations

The transgender community, one of the most marginalized communities, faces a range of discriminatory issues in workplaces and educational institutions. The study seeks to investigate the extent of organizational support ensured by the workplaces to create a transgender-friendly environment in Bangladesh. The paper opted for a mixed study and surveyed 47 trans workers using a questionnaire. The responses yielded quantitative data that was analyzed using SPSS. The qualitative data was collected through focus group discussions with seven respondents. The study findings showed that the discrimination and exclusion experience is negative for trans workers of Bangladeshi organizations and educational institutions. While most of the respondents felt primarily excluded in the formal setting, they feel that they have been intentionally left out when they meet their coworkers in informal or social gatherings. The outcomes of the discrimination involved forced termination and absenteeism on the ground of their non-binary gender identity. It was also found that many Bangladeshi organizations still do not want trans workers to represent them. To the best of researchers’ understanding, the past research on the transgender community’s diversity and inclusion experience in organizations is rarely covered from the developing country’s perspective. This paper attempts to fulfill the study gap. Recommendations for good practices to ensure diversity is proposed to companies. Creating a more inclusive workplace is expected to create a robust economic and social impact for developing countries like Bangladesh. Keywords: Bangladesh, Discrimination, Diversity, Inclusion, Trans workers, Trans-friendly environment, Organizations

Do Canadians Support Tailored and Targeted Public Health Programs? A Discrete Choice Experiment

Background. We aimed to assess public support of tailored and targeted public health interventions for various marginalized communities.Methods. We conducted a discrete choice experiment using a web-based survey advertised to Facebook and Instagram users living in Canada, aged >16. Participants were asked to choose between funding two hypothetical public health programs. Each program was described by its purpose; expected increase in life expectancy; and target group. Demographically-weighted generalized linear mixed-effects models were constructed to identify program factors associated with program selection.Results. 23,889 exercises were completed by 3,054 participants. Selected programs were less likely to focus on prevention (vs. treatment). For each 1-year increase in the marginal years of life gained, there was a 15% increase in the odds of a program being selected. Interventions tailored to marginalized communities or targeting stigmatized health conditions were less likely to be selected compared with interventions targeted to the general population or targeting chronic health conditions. Noteworthy exceptions included an increased preference for interventions aligning with the perceived needs of marginalized communities (e.g. HIV and men who have sex with men).Conclusions. Stigmatizing perceptions of health conditions and key populations likely influence public health programming preferences of Canadians. Informational campaigns highlighting disparities experienced by marginalized populations may improve support for targeted and tailored interventions.

Marginalized Communities are Underrepresented as Creative Contributors

We investigate the socially inferred gender and racial/ethnic identities of influential creative artists in four domains. Women make up 51% of the U.S. population but are underrepresented in contemporary art (28%), fashion (45%), box office film (27%), and popular music (17%). Marginalized racial/ethnic groups make up 39% of the U.S. population yet comprise approximately half that figure in contemporary art (22%), fashion (22%), and film (19%). Black musical artists have higher representation (48%), though higher representation does not equate with equity and inclusion. As for intersectional identity, white men are overrepresented in all four domains by factors ranging from 1.4 to 2 as compared to the U.S. population, and most other gender-racial/ethnic groups are further minoritized. Our study is the first comprehensive, comparative, empirical look at intersectional identity across creative fields. The exclusion of marginalized individuals, including those who are women, American Indian / Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Latinx, and Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander, is severe. The lack of self-expressed demographic data is a challenge, as is the erasure of certain identity groups from the American Community Survey, including agender, gender noncomforming, nonbinary, and transgender individuals. These are challenges that, if addressed, would enhance our collective understanding of diversity in creative fields. Efforts taken by executives, influencers, and other power brokers to make creative fields more diverse, equitable, and inclusive would amplify the many well-documented benefits of art to individuals and to society.

Sites of Violence, Sites of Peace, Sites of Justice: Transforming the Relational Landscape of Yogyakarta

The collaborative “Sites of Violence, Sites of Peace” project seeks to transform the relational landscape of Yogyakarta by enabling new intergenerational conversations about the 1965 politicide in Indonesia and further injustices with other marginalized communities. This community-engaged project developed walking tours of (largely unacknowledged) sites of historic violence: a colonial fort turned national museum, a derelict office building, a refurbished bank. Through these tours, sites of past suffering are activated by unheard survivor testimonies, making visible historical injustice and its contemporary and enduring significance. Unsettling the dominant spatial arrangement of Yogyakarta, the tours rewrite the city as a space where injustice and persecution are experienced. Crucially, the tour is also a relational encounter, facilitating intergenerational conversations that challenge social and political exclusionary norms. It, thereby, enables a form of relational justice, which requires active involvement from fellow citizens, not solely redress from the state.

Pokémon Go as palimpsest

In this paper, I employ the concept of the palimpsest of meaning (Bailey, 2007) to illustrate how Pokémon Go shapes and produces relations to place. Using ethnographic data from student players at the University of Guelph, I demonstrate how augmented reality (AR) gaming constructs a curated layer of place meaning that influences players’ knowledge of, relationships to, and movement through space. In so doing, I argue that we should not ignore the potential of AR technology to influence how we come to know place, emphasizing the impacts that biases, which are coded into this technology, might have on subaltern narratives of place and on marginalized communities, particularly in the context of Canadian settler colonialism and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge.

Political Domination and Economic Dispossession of Farmers: The Case of Land Acquisition for Special Economic Zones in India

Involuntary acquisition of agricultural land for setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in India benefited the elite at the expense of small farmers who were and are the dominant voting group. Consequently, such policies were met with fierce political resistance by farmer organizations across the country. However, these movements have a mixed record against land acquisition attempts by the state and large corporations. This paper presents a simple model of the political conflict between the elite and small farmers over land acquisition to show how the elite may mobilize resources to ensure that their economic interests are protected even in democracies where they are in electoral minorities. We test the predictions of our model using a new data set compiled on SEZ projects that failed to acquire land because of farmer agitations. We show that factors like inequality in land ownership (class) and hierarchies of caste hinder the ability of small and marginal farmers to successfully organize collective action against land acquisition. Further, the division of votes along caste and ethnic lines also dilutes the potential for successful farmer agitations against land acquisition. Finally, we find that historically marginalized communities also resist land acquisition even when they face greater caste-based discrimination in the traditional village economy.