Discussions
Centering the Margins: Uplifting Community Health Workers to Advance Health Equity
Join us for a panel discussion that speaks to the role of community engaged research in the new exhibition LaToya Ruby Frazier: More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021-2022, on view November 3, 2024—March 23, 2025 at the BMA.
Hear from local community health workers Madelin Martinez, MPH, Wilfredo (Wil) Torriente, and Latish Walker in a conversation presented by Dr. Lisa Cooper, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and Founding Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, and moderated by Dr. Chidinma Ibe, Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Community Engagement, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity.
Following the panel discussion, stay to explore the exhibition and enjoy a reception with light bites by Xquisite Catering and a live jazz trio produced by multi-instrumentalist Jamal Moore.
Tickets
Free. Registration is encouraged.
Schedule
6 p.m. – Doors open
6:30 p.m. – Program begins
7:30 p.m. – Reception in Fox Court
Exhibition & Event Details
According to the American Public Health Association, community health workers are frontline public health workers who are trusted members of or have an unusually close understanding of the communities they serve. They are skillful “trust-builders” and experts in navigating health and social services. These qualities enable them to link people with various needs to resources that support their well-being. More Than Conquerors celebrates their essential contributions in support of people who experience social marginalization. Funded in part by a National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship, Frazier’s exhibit was commissioned for the 58th Carnegie International in 2022, where it won the Carnegie Prize, and was acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2023.
Powerful and evocative, the installation monumentalizes the community health workers’ vital efforts and challenges us to consider the nature of how and who we honor. This panel discussion offers an opportunity to hear directly from some of those who heroically and successfully served patients during the worst public health crisis in a century.
The Collaboration
Frazier’s photographic installation focuses on the Baltimore community health workers with whom she connected through Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity researchers, Drs. Lisa Cooper and Chidinma Ibe. Cooper and Frazier first connected during a 2015 conversation hosted by The Contemporary and the Baltimore School for the Arts that explored how the powers of art, medicine, politics, science, and technology might intersect to address environmental racism. That meeting highlighted their shared interests in uplifting the voices of people who experience social marginalization, using approaches informed by their unique professional and lived experiences. One of these tools includes photovoice, a community-based participatory research method used by Cooper’s Johns Hopkins team and their community partners. Photovoice elevates the voices and experiences of those from socially disenfranchised communities in ways that move beyond traditional research. People participating in photovoice studies take pictures of their local communities and discuss the images as a group. Together, they explore their community’s needs, strengths, and capacity for social change. Cooper recognized similarities to the photovoice concept in Frazier’s earlier series The Notion of Family, identifying it as medical photography.
Cooper and Frazier met again at a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellows Forum, where a cohort of scientists, doctors, scholars, filmmakers, and photographers convened to explore collaborations. This prompted their thinking about what they could achieve together around social justice and health inequities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Frazier was awarded a National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship, which provided resources that helped to support their collaboration. The two friends, along with colleagues and community health workers in Baltimore, went on to build the foundations of this exhibition.
Sponsors
Developed collaboratively, this event is presented by the Baltimore Museum of Art with additional funding provided by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and Johns Hopkins Wavelengths.
For BMA Members
Dr. Cooper’s 2021 book from Johns Hopkins University Press, Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?, discusses how to eliminate the injustices that plague the health care system and society. The book follows Dr. Cooper’s journey from her childhood in Liberia, West Africa, to her thirty-year career working first as a clinician and then as a health equity researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
BMA Members: Save 20% on Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem when you attend the event and buy the book at the BMA Shop.
Participants
Dr. Lisa Cooper
Dr. Lisa Cooper is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Health Care at Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Bloomberg School of Public Health. An international thought leader on health disparities among populations experiencing social marginalization, she founded and directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. An internal medicine physician and pioneering public health researcher, her work focuses on programs to improve doctor-patient communication, patient empowerment, and quality of primary care. Dr. Cooper collaborates locally, nationally, and globally with community and healthcare partners to implement rigorous clinical trials, identifying solutions that alleviate racial and income disparities in healthcare, translating them into best practices and concrete policy changes that benefit patients’ experiences and community health. A MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Cooper has served as an expert advisor for media and organizations including BBC, The Carter Center, National Urban League, NPR, The New York Times, and PBS. In 2021, President Biden appointed her to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She is the author of Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem? (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).
Dr. Chidinma Ibe
Dr. Chidinma A. Ibe is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the Associate Director of Community Engagement for the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. Dr. Ibe is an applied health equity researcher who partners with diverse collaborators to launch community-based solutions for reducing hypertension disparities. She has extensive experience engaging with the full spectrum of community health worker programs in the metropolitan Baltimore area, from design to implementation to evaluation. Dr. Ibe’s research highlights community health workers’ impact on addressing adverse social determinants of health among members of socially marginalized communities. It also showcases how community health workers’ lived experiences influence their approach to supporting individuals, families, and communities.
Latish Walker
Latish Walker is a Community Health Worker who has served in health care for 27 years, with 7 years spent as a devoted CHW. Latish is currently a Certified Community Health Worker II at both Johns Hopkins Medical Center Bayview-Comprehensive Care Practice and Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center Medical Clinic through Hopkins Community Connection, in addition to serving as the newest staff member for the Johns Hopkins Community Health Worker Training Program, specializing in employment placement. During her tenure as a CHW at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Latish conceived of and spearheaded walking tours of East Baltimore for incoming Hopkins residents. This evolved into an annual tradition and garnered praise from residents and clinical leaders across the institution. As the Operations Lead for the Johns Hopkins Mobile Clinics, Latish played an integral role in helping thousands of Maryland residents get the COVID-19 vaccine during the height of the pandemic. She was also the brainchild behind Turnaround Tuesday’s Food and Care Package Delivery Program during the pandemic. Latish has contributed to important research about CHWs, most notably as a presenter at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting. She is also a medical assistant studying for the certification exam. In keeping with her commitment to underserved communities, Latish’s dream is to open transitional housing for individuals and families.
Madelin Martinez, MPH
Madeline Martinez is the Assistant Director of Advocacy at Catholic Charities of Baltimore, where she shapes and executes the agency’s policy agenda. She brings more than eight years of experience in health and human services, with a strong commitment to community building, to this role. Her diverse experience and passion for advocacy make her a versatile leader in public health and social policy at Catholic Charities of Baltimore. Previously, Madeline served as the Executive Director of the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus, doubling membership and playing a key role in passing the Healthy Babies Equity Act of 2022. She began her career at the Baltimore County Department of Health, connecting residents to health services, and later served as a community health worker for Maryland Latinos Unidos. In her current role at Catholic Charities, Madelin excels in alliance building with political figures, state agencies, and advocates. Her work addresses behavioral health, immigration, aging, disability, and poverty issues. Madelin holds a Master’s in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, reinforcing her commitment to ensuring equal opportunities for all.
Wilfredo (Wil) Torriente
Wil Torriente is a Certified Community Health Worker in Maryland, holding a Bachelor of Science in Public Health (Summa Cum Laude) and a Master of Science in Human Services. He currently serves as the Program Manager for the Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital Responder Program and the Ascension Saint Agnes Mobile Health Clinic in Baltimore City. These efforts aim to promote violence reduction, health care access, and patient engagement for underserved populations.
Wil is widely respected in the community and is deeply committed to serving at-risk and high-risk individuals through education, advocacy, and resource linkage. His personal mission is to promote public health through authentic community engagement and a holistic approach.
Wil has held various roles in the nonprofit sector, including CHW, CHW Supervisor, and Data/IT Coordinator, focusing on underserved populations in East Baltimore. He has also been actively involved in several leadership roles, including serving as Sergeant at Arms for the Maryland Community Health Network Association, Member of the Adult Patient Family Advisory Executive Committee at Johns Hopkins, Member of the Johns Hopkins Opioid Clinical Community, and Member of the Opioid Study Advisory Committee at Bayview Medical Center’s Center for Learning and Health.
Jamal Moore
Jamal R. Moore is a native of Baltimore Maryland and a multi-instrumentalist, composer/performer and educator. His background includes California Institute of The Arts (M.F.A. 2012), Berklee College of Music (B.M. 2005), Eubie Blake Jazz Orchestra (2000) under the direction of Christopher Calloway Brooks and historical acclaimed Frederick Douglass Sr. High whom notable alumni Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Ennis graduated from.
Some notable luminaries Jamal has worked and recorded with are Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Nicole Mitchell, Archie Shepp, David Ornette Cherry, Tomeka Reid, Dr. Bill Cole, DJ Lou Gorbea, George Duke, Sheila E, David Murray, JD Parran, Ras Moshe, Hprizm, (Antipop Consortium) Tatsua Nakatani, Hamid Drake and the late Yahyah Abdul Majid (Sun Ra Arkestra). He is an affiliate of The Pan African Peoples Arkestra of the late Horace Tapscott, Black Praxis of David Boykin, and member of Konjur Collective.
Jamal currently leads his own groups, Akebulan Arkestra, Napata Strings, Black Elements Quartet, Organix Trio, and Mojuba Duo.
“As musicians we are healers of humanity and have a responsibility to cleanse dis—ease through positive tones, frequencies and vibrations. Music is the nucleus and universal language of the oversoul, mind, body and spirit.” – Jamal R. Moore
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity gathers highly trained and dedicated researchers, practitioners, and community members who work together to make healthcare institutions more equitable, communities more engaged, and health policies and practices more effective at eliminating health disparities locally, nationally, and globally. Established in 2010 with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, and led by founding director Dr. Lisa Cooper, the Center conducts transdisciplinary research, implements innovative programs, trains medical, nursing, allied health and public health professionals; activates and empowers patients and communities; and provides expert advice to policymakers, health system and industry leaders, and leading public media outlets. Since its inception, the Center has raised more than 50 million dollars in grant funding, completed six pioneering clinical trials, developed and sustains an active and engaged community advisory board of more than 100 members, and created a model educational program that has trained more than 500 health and public health professionals at Johns Hopkins, and more than 9,000 health equity leaders from around the world.
Related
Centering the Margins: Uplifting Community Health Workers to Advance Health Equity is presented as part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.