Anti-Racism Toolkit
SAHM Anti-Racism Toolkit
SAHM’s Diversity Committee has created this toolkit to provide access to resources to help adolescent health professionals combat racism, promote racial justice, reduce health disparities, and advance health equity for youth. The toolkit supports SAHM members in implementing the recommendations of the 2018 position paper, Racism and Its Harmful Effects on Nondominant Racial–Ethnic Youth and Youth-Serving Providers: A Call to Action for Organizational Change.
This toolkit is a continuous work in progress and additional resources will be added. Check back frequently for updates.
SAHM Position Papers
Racism and Its Harmful Effects on Nondominant Racial–Ethnic Youth and Youth-Serving Providers: A Call to Action for Organizational Change (2018)
View online | Download PDF
Promoting Equity and Reducing Health Disparities Among Racially/Ethnically
Diverse Adolescents: A Position Paper of the Society for Adolescent Health and
Medicine (2013)
View online | Download PDF
Suggested Readings
Commentary: Inaction is not an option: Using Anti-racism Approaches to Address Health Inequities and Racism and Respond to Current Challenges Affecting Youth
Journal of Adolescent Health, September 2020
Maria Veronica Svetaz, MD, MPH, FAAFP, FSAHM
Commentary: Hoodies Up, SAHM! Preventing Adversity Due to Racism for the Next Generation
Journal of Adolescent Health, September 2020
Maria Trent, MD, MPH, FAAP, FSAHM
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Policy Statement: The Impact of Racism on Child and Adolescent Health
Maria Trent, MD, MPH, FAAP, FSAHM Danielle G. Dooley, MD, MPhil,FAAP, Jacqueline Dougé, MD, MPH, FAAP, SECTION ON ADOLESCENT HEALTH, COUNCIL ON COMMUNITY PEDIATRICS, and COMMITTEE ON ADOLESCENCE
Promoting Health Equity Among Racially and Ethnically Diverse Adolescents
Editors: Lisa Barkley, MD; Maria Veronica Svetaz, MD, MPH; Veenod L. Chulani, MD, MSEd
Reaching Teens: Strength-Based, Trauma-Sensitive, Resilience-Building Communication Strategies Rooted in Positive Youth Development, 2nd Edition
Editor: Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MS Ed, FAAP, FSAHM; Associate editor: Zachary Brett Ramirez McClain, MD
- Chapter 42: The Traumatic Impact of Racism and Discrimination on Young People and How to Talk About It – (open access)
Building Resilience in Children and Teens, 4th Edition
Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MS Ed, FAAP, FSAHM; with Martha M. Jablow
- Chapter 22: Raising Youth of Color in a Complex World – (open access)
Racism and Xenophobia: Impacts on Youth and the Providers who Serve Them – (slides from July 2020 presentation)
Marissa Raymond-Flesch, MD, MPH
Online Learning
SAHM Lecture Series: Beyond the Basics – Adolescent Medicine as a Tool for Social Justice
Addressing Racism with Youth of Color
Maria Veronica Svetaz, MD, MPH, FAAFP, FSAHM
Promoting Professional Development and Leadership for Underrepresented Health Care Providers
Michele Allen, MD, MS; Maria Veronica Svetaz, MD, MPH, FAAFP, FSAHM
The Post Viral Unequal world that the Pandemic exposed: Addressing the deleterious effects of racism through radical healing with our youth.
Maria Veronica Svetaz, Nuray Kanbur, MD, FSAHM, Romina Barral, MD, Ken Ginsburg, MD, MEd, FSAHM, Marissa Raymond-Flesch, MD, MPH, Michele Kelley, Maura Shramko (she/her), Wanda Thruston, DNP, PNP, RN, Tamera, Coyne-Beasley, MD, MPH,
Additional Anti-Racism Resources
Black Lives Matter: Anti-Racism Resources for Social Workers and Therapists
Social Work Career – Social Work Career
Anti-racism resources for social workers
Juneteenth: Commemorate, Celebrate and Elevate
Resources from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dismantling Structural Racism, Supporting Black Lives and Achieving Health Equity: Our Role
Rachel R Hardeman, PhD, MPH; Eduardo M Medina, MD, MPH; Katy B Kozhimannil, PhD, MPA
Note to educators: Hope required when growing roses in concrete
Duncan-Andrade, J, Harvard Educational Review
Beyond resistance! Youth activism and community change: New democratic possibilities for practice and policy for America’s youth
Ginwright S, Cammarota J and Noguera P
Awake to Woke to Work: Building a Race Equity Culture
Equity in the Center
Infographic: Systemic Racism is a Public Health Crisis
National Institute for Health Care Management
Truth in Tension: Reflections on Racism in Medicine
Unaka N, Journal of Hospital Medicine
The Death of George Floyd: Bending the Arc of History Towards Justice for Generations of Children
Dreyer BP et al, Pediatrics.
About the Toolkit
As part of its work, the SAHM Diversity Committee created this toolkit to support and help SAHM members “own” the 2018 SAHM position paper, Racism and Its Harmful Effects on Nondominant Racial–Ethnic Youth and Youth-Serving Providers: A Call to Action for Organizational Change.
In order to support the “democratization” of the Position Paper, and to enable it to become a tool, not a scholarly paper, the Diversity Committee created this toolkit, to enable access to open chapters and webinars that help them understand the why, what and how of the journey of bringing the context and presence of expanded adverse childhood events such as racism and poverty to the center of the care we provide to all our youth.
Principles behind the position paper:
It is a response to an urgent public health crisis, hands-on and action oriented. The United Nations has called for renewed action against “contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance” in the face of this troubling trend.
It is a response that belongs to all: both non-dominant groups and allies.
It is a Call to Action aiming to inspire anyone in an institution to start the process of dismantling racism, regardless of hierarchy. We are all leaders, and we all need to advocate and make change happen to stop marginalizing communities.
About the SAHM Diversity Committee
The Diversity Committee has facilitated the advancement of an equity lens in the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine since its inception in 2007. The Committee strategized how collaboration and seating at different committees within the Society were needed to advance health equity and highlighted the need of a racial-ethnic developmental approach to youth care, where contextual frameworks and ethnic-racial identities were included in the equation of delivering best practices. The Committee has created cultural change through different strategic actions including:
Created the expectation that all SAHM Annual Meeting research submissions that include race as a variable utilize a strengths-based approach and demonstrate a clear need for the use of race
Updated SAHM’s surveys to reflect the many identities that different providers of teens were bringing to SAHM
Created equity-focused educational sessions for the SAHM Annual Meeting including: Racism and Health: pathophysiology as a Hot Topic, a Mindfulness Institute for Providers of Color, and a Leadership workshop for non-dominant racial-ethnic providers, among other workshops.
Members co-presented in different venues for early fellows and early career members, at their request, as role models in advocacy and health equity, and published extensively in the areas of equity and youth of color.
Co-produced different press releases to advocate for equity among LGBTQ youth, youth at the border and youth marginalized and most affected for the current Pandemic (ICE Detention Centers and Juvenile Detention Centers).
