A man with brown skin and a brown cap wearing a striped button down shirt holds a sign written on cardboard which says: I’m A Human Being Not A Commodity. Behind him are other protesters with signs and an urban high rise building.
This two part online course digs deep to expose the historic roots of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC), enables participants to understand the interconnections of healthcare institutions with governmental bodies, big pharma, health insurers, and agribusinesses, and provides a foundation to understand and critique the role of systemic racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, transphobia, and heterosexism in the MIC...
Medical Apartheid, contested illnesses, disability justice, medical torture, environmental toxicology and the interconnections among climate and disability justice will be covered in this course from an intersectional social justice and people’s science lens.
This course begins September 12th, 2019! Participants can enroll for one or both parts. Scholarships and work exchanges will be available. Interested in enrolling, contact us and see the full course description in Upcoming Events!
This two part online course provides a strong foundation in theories and concepts based in critical trauma studies rooted in an intersectional social justice and people’s science framework...
The course integrates emergent findings in neuroscience, epigenetics, and trans-disciplinary trauma studies highlighting the work of leading multi-racial scholars, activists, and healers such as Dr. Joy Degruy, Dr. Bonnie Duran, Dr. Eduardo Duran, and Resmaa Menakem. The course also covers the powerful Polyvagal Theory of Dr. Stephan Porges, and the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and Dr. Judith Herman.
Enrollment includes a learning goals survey so the curriculum can be tailored to the needs of participants. The course size will be capped to promote in-depth learning and is designed for healthcare professionals, healers, activists, students, and those of us healing from trauma.
This course will be offered in January 2020, participants can enroll for one or both parts. Opportunities for scholarships and work exchanges will be available. Interested in enrolling, contact us!
This one session workshop provides foundational training in medical advocacy tools and techniques for diverse healthcare providers and activists rooted in intersectional health justice and people’s science. Participants will learn:
basic ‘know your rights’ information for medical institutions
what advocacy is
what advocacy can accomplish
how to support clients, patients, and/or community members in identifying their needs and priorities
and, how to identify and amplify your own natural strengths as advocates to strengthen your advocacy game and confidence!
We are excited to offer this training to our communities given the current healthcare crisis, and the attacks on reproductive and trans health, and people with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
This one session workshop offers foundational ‘know your rights’ training for dealing with a range of medical institutions. The training is for people who use healthcare services frequently and/or for care providers, personal assistants, allies, loved ones and friends of frequent users of healthcare services. This training is grounded in intersectional health and disability justice. Participants will:
share their advocacy successes and challenges
learn basic ‘know your rights’ information
develop a new understanding of the power of advocacy and what it can accomplish, and
challenge ableism and transform internalized ableism by identifying and amplifying your own natural strengths as advocates to strengthen your advocacy game and confidence!
No prior advocacy experience is required for this training. This training can be tailored for community-based, faith-based and social justice organizations.
are tailored for community, faith based, and non-profit organizations and socially conscious enterprises and cooperatives.
reveals the hidden history of the MIC dating back to its roots in the early 1900’s period of industrialization. The training enables participants to develop the skills to analyze the MIC and better understand our current healthcare crisis. The training covers: the interlocking institutions which comprise the MIC: big pharma, health insurers, governmental bodies, scientific research bodies, professional organizations, and agribusinesses and how these all impact the healthcare we receive (or don’t). It also explores the history and ongoing patterns of institutional racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, fatphobia, and heterosexism within the MIC.
provides basic training in understanding ableism, empowering participants to take action to challenge and transform ableism in their communities and the institutions which wield great control over our lives. The workshop provides training on the 10 Principles of Disability Justice as developed by our collaborators at Sins Invalid, a Disability Justice leader. Interactive, this workshop encourages personal and political reflection to allow participants to deeply grasp the core concepts of disability justice and build the foundation for ongoing implementation and action. Participants will also cultivate an intersectional understanding of disability, health and climate justice, so crucial for our times. Follow-up implementation consulting or executive coaching available.
provides an in-depth overview of the 5 core Health Justice Principles, enabling participants to arrive at a broader and more liberatory understanding of what we really mean when we talk about ‘health’. The training integrates real-world examples most pressing in participants’ lives to instill understanding and deeply explore implementing the principles and potential barriers. The Health Justice Principles support other social justice visions and values, strengthening our work for change and the health of our communities and planet.
is one of our favorite trainings! This workshop uses a people’s science lens to provide a critical history of trauma. It offers foundational skills in understanding the nervous system, how it works, how and why trauma happens, and its inextricable links to oppression -- historical and ongoing. The training also highlights the powerful work of may POC activists, mental health leaders and scholars, and the visionary Polyvagal theory. Interactive exercises support participants to more deeply understand, embody, and integrate their learning. We recommend this training to all organizations seeking to design for resilience.
provides foundational trauma training from a people’s science and intersectional social justice lens -- honoring and acknowledging the causative role of historic and ongoing oppression. The training supports participants to understand how many behaviors we or others engage in may be related to traumatic activation or survival skills in response to what we ourselves and our communities have lived through. This workshop teaches resilience: how it emerges at the level of our neurobiology, what it looks like, feels like, how to honor the resilience that got us to where we are, sustain and encourage its expansion and how to implement this knowledge for wise organizational design and planning. Follow-up consultation and coaching available.
explores how we arrived at our current healthcare crisis by examining the historical roots of the MIC during its formation in the early 1900s period of monopoly- powered industrialization. The training explores the enormously formative impacts of research and policy organizations founded by families such as the Carnegies, Morgans, and Rockefellers in designing: medical schools and curriculum, professional medical and research associations, and early pharmaceutical companies — many of which had ties to agribusinesses of the period which were instrumental in creating the biological weapons deployed in World War I and II. Many of these ties endure, such as Bayer-Monsanto.
This two part series offers in-depth training in how US healthcare was designed to generate high profits, and captive markets, while institutionalizing and maintaining racial, gender, and class divisions and discrimination. The training reveals a history and analysis we don’t get in school, enabling participants to envision and act as healing justice agents of change on a new level, making this series all the more crucial in these times. Issue-based content most pertinent to participants, such as attacks on reproductive justice or trans health, or the growing epidemic of high Black infant and Black women/ birth parent mortality rates, will be integrated according to need.
uses the ground-breaking work of medical investigative journalist Harriet Washington as a guide to understand and transform historic and persistent patterns of medical apartheid and abuse. Covering the 1700s to the present, this training explores the ways medical science has engaged in and justified medical abuse and torture from the current opioid epidemic (which has disproportionately harmed Native American and low income rural communities), to the widespread practice of ordering medical students to perform non-consensual pelvic exams on people under anesthesia for unrelated procedures, and health insurers’ systematic denial of life-saving medications or services. Strategies for action that are most pertinent to participants will be integrated.
overviews how medical institutions and practices extend into the Prison Industrial Complex and amplify its power to control, contain, and punish our communities. Many activists and progressive academics refer to this as the carceral continuum. This training explores issues that impact our loved ones and communities: current efforts to criminalize medical procedures such as abortion and withhold life-saving treatment from trans and gender non-conforming communities, the use of medical procedures to force feed hunger-strikers in ICE captivity, and the growing epidemic of police violence targeting People of Color, especially those with disabilities. This workshop is tailored to support the work and aims of participants, especially healing justice and criminal justice work.
explores the inherent interconnections among health, disability, and climate justice - so crucial for our times and for the work of diverse change-makers and leaders. This training introduces the framework of the toxic tipping point. It offers foundational skills building in understanding and analyzing the latest data on air pollution and its role in creating disabling environments and skyrocketing disease rates, especially in majority People of Color and/or low income neighborhoods. Curriculum also overviews the connections of major corporate polluters with big pharma, governmental bodies such as the EPA and other healthcare institutions. This is one of our most powerful and timely trainings!