Fireside Chat: Celebrating Black Excellence and Authors

DLSPH opens up Black History Month by welcoming the audience into a conversation about themes impacting Black cultures, communities and experiences.

Launched by a performance from poet, 2018 Canadian National Champion and 2021 Toronto Grand Slam Champion, Amoya Reè, the webinar centres on a discussion between esteemed Black academics that hopes to extract and explain a variety of topics in this 75 minute virtual event.

Join a conversation between moderator Dr. Beverley Essue, Associate Professor of Global Health in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH), and Dexter Voisin, Dean of Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and status Faculty at DLSPH, as they reflect their personal journeys, narratives around Black communities and experiences, and discuss the systems and mechanisms required to recognize and systematize Black excellence in academia and beyond.

Voisin is also an accomplished author whose latest book published in 2019 “America The Beautiful And Violent: Black Youth And Neighborhood Trauma In Chicago“, provides a compelling and social-justice-oriented analysis of current trends in neighbourhood violence in light of the historical and structural factors that have reproduced entrenched patterns of racial and economic inequality.

Bios

Amoya Reé (she/her) is a Jamaican-Canadian performance poet and 2018 Canadian National Champion. Her writing is rooted in her lived experiences as an immigrant, mother, & community worker. Reé was recently crowned the 2021 Toronto Grand Slam Champion and is currently working on her debut collection as a 2021 project grant recipient from both the Ontario Arts Council and the coveted Canada Council for the Arts.

Beverley Essue is an Associate Professor of Global Health in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She also holds a Visiting Scientist appointment at the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Americas, University of Miami and is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health, India. She is a global health systems researcher and health economist who leads interdisciplinary research focused on strengthening financial risk protection, supporting effective and equitable priority setting and advancing equity, including gender equity, across global health systems. Her research tackles some of the most pressing issues facing global health and is conducted across low-, middle- and high-income countries. She has led work for key global health initiatives including the Disease Control Priorities series and the Lancet Taskforce on Non-Communicable Diseases. She is currently a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Cancer and Health Systems and co-chair of the scientific advisory committee for the Lancet Commission on Gender Based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People. She is also scientific advisor to the World Bank’s Health Longevity Initiative. In 2020 she was recognized as a Canadian Women in Global Health.

Dexter R. Voisin is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Dean in Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. He began his tenure at the Mandel School in January 2022 after serving for two and a half years as dean of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair in Social Work at the University of Toronto. Before this appointment, he was a full professor at the University of Chicago for two decades. He was also the director of theSTI/HIV Intervention Network (SHINE) and co-director of the Chicago Center for HIV Elimination (CCHE) at the University of Chicago.

His research examines how structural, racial violence and interpersonal forms of violence impacts health behaviors and outcomes among minority populations. He has published more than 160 peer-reviewed studies, and research has generated more than 11 million dollars in extramural funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the W.T. Grant Foundation, among others. His research has informed public policy in the State of Illinois and was appointed to two Illinois State boards by Governor Pat Quinn. Voisin’s latest project is a book entitled, America the Beautiful and Violent: Black Youth and Neighborhood Trauma in Chicago, published by Columbia University Press in 2019.

In 2020, Voisin was elected a board member of the Society for Social Work and Research and in 2021 he was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare; he was appointed to their board in 2022.

His expertise and research findings have been frequently cited by numerous members of the international and national media. Voisin has more than 30 years post-MSW clinical experience with practiced expertise in the areas of substance abuse, adult psychopathology and adolescent and family therapy. He has delivered many keynote speeches and conducted numerous training sessions for health care providers.

He received his BA in psychology cum laude from St. Andrews College, his MSW (practice) from the University of Michigan, and his PhD (advanced practice) from Columbia University School of Social Work.