Category: Black History Month

Categories
Black History Month

Black History Month

Dr Abisola Balogun-Katung Research Associate PHSI

Black history Month (BHM) was first celebrated 35 years ago in the UK in October 1987 to recognise African contributions to cultural, economic, and political life in the UK. To celebrate the study of Black life and history in 2022 ARC funded PhD student Ania Couchinho, along with Research Associates Abisola Balogun- Katung and Fiona Graham have decided to focus on the important research, organisations and events across the UK that focus on the improvement of healthcare for Black people.

Support Black Health Organisations

FiveXMore

Five X More is dedicated to supporting mothers with its campaigning work and recommendations. It focuses on empowering Black women to make informed choices and advocate for themselves throughout their pregnancies and after childbirth.

Sickle Cell Society

As a disease that disproportionately affects Black individuals, the Sickle Cell Society has been working alongside health care professionals, parents, and people living with sickle cell to raise awareness of the disorder. The Society’s aim is to support those living with sickle cell, empowering them to achieve their full potential.

The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network

BAATN are the UK’s largest independent organisation to specialise in working psychologically, informed by an understanding of intersectionality, with people who identify as Black, African, South Asian and Caribbean. Our primary focus and area of expertise is to support people from these heritages. However, we are open to other People of Colour who are affected by oppression due to the colour of their skin and global white power.

The Black Men’s Health UK

This fantastic organisation focuses on health matters which adversely affect Black men as a social group. This includes AIDs, hypertension and diabetes.

Black Minds Matter UK

Black Minds Matter UK is a fully registered charity operating in the UK; connecting Black individuals and families with free mental health services- by professional Black therapists to support their mental health. Our vision is to make mental health topics more relevant and accessible for all Black people in the U.K., removing the stigma and remodelling the services to be relevant for the Black community.

Workshops, Events & Networking Opportunities

Networks for Black researchers

CoDE Early Career Researcher (ECR) Race Network

Black Women’s Health & Wellbeing Research Network

Caribbean and African Health Network

NHS BME Network

African Health Policy Network

Black Health Forum

Black people & Healthcare Workshops & Events

#BlackBoyJoyGone

BFI Doc Society funded hybrid documentary by and for black men on mental health, sexual trauma and finding strength through brotherhood.

Date:Tuesday 25th October 2022

Location: Manchester

Black Women in Health Conference

This event aims to connect, inspire, educate, empower and celebrate black female healthcare professionals on becoming authentic impactful change makers and making positive impact.

Date:Saturday 15th October 2022

Location: Manchester

Nursing Narratives ‘Exposed’ Film Screening and Q & A

This is a special School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health screening of ‘Exposed’ a documentary about the experiences of racism of nurses and mid-wives before, during and after the pandemic.

Date: Friday 21st October 2022

Location: Coventry

BHM at Newcastle University & around Newcastle

PHSI EDI BHM Book Club 2022

Check out Abisola and Ania’s fantastic collection of books on Black History Month and support Black businesses and booksellers.

BHM Lecture: Why history matters by Professor Hakim Adi

In this lecture, Professor Adi shares his own experience of Black History Month. He reflects on the struggles, over the last 40 years, to combat eurocentrism and develop what is often termed ‘Black British History’, and discusses his new book, African and Caribbean in Britain: A History.

Date: Thursday 27th October 2022

Location: Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building

Moving beyond the record with Rastafari

How can oral histories be used to develop more affirmative practices? This lecture explores the role of ‘self’ in relation to power and research knowledge(s). Focusing on how orality is approached within the context of Rastafari methodologies, Gray will draw on her personal and intellectual reflections from reasoning and documenting a history of the Rastafari community in Britain to suggest alternative routes to engage with life histories.

Date: Thursday 24th November 2022

Location: Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building

100 Books by Black Authors

At the city library will find a 100 Books by Black Authors display on Level 3 of City Library and smaller displays in some branches.

Date: October 2022

Location: Newcastle City Library

Listen to this Story! An Exhibition about children’s books and Black Britain

This exhibition will celebrate the work of key Black British children’s authors, illustrators, and editors as well as exploring how Black people and communities have been represented within the pages of stories for children. It will include illustrations, archives, and books from the collections of Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books and Newcastle University Special Collections. The exhibition will take place across two sites, on L3 of City Library and the ground floor of Newcastle University Library.

Date: Thursday 6th October till Wednesday 30th November 2022

Location: Newcastle City Library

BlackHistoryMonth.Org 2022 Listings

An array of workshops, events and trainings opportunities within and around the Newcastle area collated by the Black History Month online organisation.

Date: Varied

Location: Varied

BHM Eventbrite 2022 Listings

An array of workshops, events and trainings opportunities within and around the Newcastle area collated by Eventbrite.

Date: Varied

Location: Varied

BHM Workshops & Events

BlackHistoryMonth.Org 2022 Listings

An array of workshops, events and trainings opportunities collated by the Black History Month online organisation.

Date: Varied

Location: Varied

Black History Month: Understanding the Past to Shape the Future

This talk will focus on four key things:

  • Spotlighting and celebrating Black architects who paved the way.
  • Discussing the impact and legacies of these individuals that often go unacknowledged.
  • Exploring how the erasure of these individuals is still impacting the architectural profession today.
  • Understanding how we can continue to move forward following the BLM advocacy of 2020.

Date: Wednesday 26th October 2022

Location: Zoom

Durham University Black History Month Keynote Event 2022

Organised by the University’s BAME Network and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit, our keynote event will feature Prof Hakim Adi, who will speak about our Black History Month theme for 2022, Time for Change: Action Not Words.

Date: Wednesday 19th October 2022

Location: Online

Black History Month Event: Thinking Outside the Box

Minority Ethnic Group and Allies Network (MEGA) are excited to hold ‘Thinking Outside The Box – Cultivating The Shift’. Our showcase event as part of Black History Month 2022 event will be held in person, as well as live streamed. Guest speakers include: Rianna Scipio, the UK’s first black weather presenter, and now International Authenticity and Relationship Consultant.

Ballaz in The Middle, two ex-professional NFL football players, Discussion will be centred around equality diversity and inclusion, whilst raising the awareness of important topics such as; good mental health, wellbeing, resilience, mentoring and outreach

Date: Friday 14th October 2022

Location: Online

Black History Month: Do our children need more Black history lessons?

What must change for Black pupils to feel they fully belong in our education system and wider society? How can we teach pupils the full story of how modern Britain was created? Joseph Harker, the Guardian’s senior editor for diversity and development, chairs our panel of speakers, which includes Jeffrey Boakye, former schoolteacher and author of I Heard What You Said; Lavinya Stennett, founder and chief executive of The Black Curriculum; and Desta Haile, deputy director of the Royal African Society.

Date: Monday 24th October 2022

Location: Online (paid event)

Categories
Black History Month Book Club

Book Club: Black History Month 2022

By Dr Abisola Balogun-Katung & PhD student Ania Barros Mendes Couchinho

This months PHSI EDI BOOK CLUB Abisola and Ania have put together a fantastic collection of books on Black History Month and support black businesses and booksellers.

Support Black Businesses

Afrori Books: https://afroribooks.co.uk/

Round Table Books: https://www.roundtablebooks.co.uk/shop-black-studies-module

African Bookstore: https://www.africanbookstore.net/search.asp

New Beacon Books: https://www.newbeaconbooks.com/

Black and British

David Olusoga

Black and British provide its reader with a thorough and vital history of black Britain. It provides the reader with an exposé of the lingering relationship between the people of Africa, the Caribbean and the British Isles, this book has rightfully been described as a “thrilling tale of excavation” and a ‘testimony to the rich experiences of Black people of Britain’. It is also available as a short, essential history for readers aged 12+.

A comprehensive and important history of black Britain

The Sunday Times

The Good Immigrant

Nikesh Shukla

The Good Immigrant brings together 21 thrilling Black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain. With a collection of poignant, challenging, sometimes angry, heartbreaking and humorous essays, it explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a foreign country miles away from home.  

The stories are sometimes funny, sometimes brutal, always honest … if I could, I’d push a copy of this through the letter box of every front door in Britain.

The Independent

Tribes

David Lammy

Tribes explores the benign and malignant effects of our need to belong in society. This genetically programmed and socially acquired need to belong manifests in positive ways through collaboratively achieving great successes, which individually cannot be achieved. On the other hand, this need can manifest in negative ways, particularly with globalisation and digitisation leading to new, more malicious forms of tribalism. David Lammy provides the reader with a fascinating and perceptive socio-political analysis of Britain and what it means to be British.

Lammy writes with nuance and sensitivity and accepts the lack of easy answers. But his core message is simple. We must cooperate more, compromise more, communicate more. Only connect, but offline.

Prospect

What White People Can Do Next

Emma Dabiri

Vital and empowering What White People Can Do Next teaches each of us how to be agents of change in the fight against racism and the establishment of a more just and equitable world. In this affecting and inspiring collection of essays, Emma Dabiri draws on both academic discipline and lived experience to probe the ways many of us are complacent and complicit—and can therefore combat—white supremacy. She outlines the actions we must take, including: Stopping the Denial, Interrogate Whiteness, Abandon Guilt, Redistribute Resources, Realize this s**t is killing you too . . . 

To move forward, we must begin to evaluate our prejudices, our social systems, and the ways in which white supremacy harms us all. Illuminating and practical, What White People Can Do Next is essential for everyone who wants to go beyond their current understanding and affect real—and lasting—change.

Concise, sure-footed and complete . . . a battle cry against racism for even the most socially aware . . . Dabiri’s reflections have been a very, very long time coming

Tanya Sweeny ― Irish Independent



In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

Christina Sharpe

This captivating and poetic piece of work unpacks the state and existence of Black beings in modern society. It Considers what binds Black lives together following the journey from slave ships to consciousness or what Sharpe labels ‘The Wake.’ The consciousness and awareness of Blackness that writers such as Shilliam (2015) and Adichie (2017) adopt in their work. Sharpe reinforces her idea of The Wake by defining it as a Black awareness of ‘skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, impoverishment’ (Sharpe, 2016). This Black consciousness is what Sharpe aims to academically theorize and encapsulate in this text. Its four chapters, The Wake, The Ship, The Hold and The Weather, it cleverly addresses themes of postcolonialism, decoloniality and feminism.

Christina Sharpe’s deep engagement with the archive of Black knowledge production across theory, fiction, poetry and other intellectual endeavours offers an avalanche of new insights on how to think about anti-Blackness as a significant and important structuring element of the modern scene.

Cutting across theoretical genres, In the Wake will generate important intellectual debates and maybe even movements in Black studies, cultural studies, feminist studies and beyond. This is where cultural studies should have gone a long time ago

Rinaldo Walcott – author of Black Like Who?: Writing Black Canada

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

This emotive and comforting novel offers a Pan-African narrative completely free of Eurocentrism. The story of Okonkwo, a man of the Ibo tribe in Nigeria, tells a story of a way of life many modern Africans continue to mourn. It brings to light both the positive experiences of African life before colonisation and mirrors the fall of African customs and traditions towards the end of the 19th century.

The writer in whose company the prison walls fell down

Nelson Mandela

His courage and generosity are made manifest in the work

Toni Morrison

Small Island

Andrea Levy

A moving novel that tells the stories of a Black woman, a Black man, a white woman and a white man and the way in which their paths overlap unexpectedly. Set at the time of the Windrush era, Small Island tells the story of the Windrush generation. Levy taps into the unique racialised experiences of each individual, the gender roles set by both racial backgrounds and the socio-political experiences of all four individuals as England recovers from the 2nd World War.

Gives us a new urgent take on our past.

Vogue

Black Skin, White Mask

Franz Fanon

This timeless historical critique rewrites the history of colonialism from a lens that describes the transition of Africa towards Eurocentrism. Fanon discusses Africa’s heart-breaking psychological, physical, and cultural transformation that provides historical context for today’s socio-political landscape. A must-read for all those interested in Decoloniality, Black and postcolonial studies.

This century’s most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism

Angela Davis
Categories
Black History Month

Meet PHSI colleague Patience Kunonga who shares her experience working on the COVID-19 PEACE Project

Meet Patience Kunonga – Research Assistant and PhD Student (Evidence Synthesis)

After completing a Master’s program in Public Health at Newcastle University in 2016, I was inspired to join the Evidence Synthesis Group (ESG) in the Population Health Sciences Institute  in March 2017. I have gained significant knowledge, experience and skills in evidence synthesis methodologies, and have become one of the core team delivering outputs for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Older People and Frailty Policy Research Unit (PRU).

Prior to my PRU role, I also supported the delivery of the NIHR Innovation Observatory. My research interests include social care, public health and evidence synthesis and I am currently working towards a PhD to develop a bespoke framework for the incorporation of assessments of health inequalities and/or inequities within evidence synthesis. Since joining ESG, I have co-authored peer-reviewed articles in top medical journals such as the British Medical Journal, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, Journal of Medical Internet Research and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.  

Patience Kunonga, Population Health Sciences Institute Research Assistant and PhD Student

COVID-19 – Palliative and End of life care experiences of people of African and Caribbean dEscent (PEACE) Project

As you may gather, previously, my skills mainly involved gathering empirical evidence from a range of sources to inform decision makers or policy changes to promote healthy ageing. However, I am currently working on a project that has taken me out of my comfort zone in terms of research methodology, but I am very excited to be part of it. The project is a qualitative piece of work, seeking to explore the end-of-life-care experiences of people of African and Caribbean descent during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a collaboration between Newcastle University and University of Manchester, is funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme led by Dr Felicity Dewhurst, an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Population Health Sciences Institute and an Honorary Consultant at St Oswald’s Hospice in Newcastle. For the project, I am the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) lead, which means I have to engage with the public to ensure their experiences and views are heard. As we celebrate Black History Month, an annual event to honour the history and celebrate the achievements of Black people in the UK, it is fitting that I reflect on how research plays an important role in trying to understand and tackle existing health inequalities, with a focus on how this affects people of African and Caribbean descent.

What is end-of-life care?

End-of-Life-Care (EOLC) refers to the treatment, care and support for people who are nearing the end of their life. It helps people live as comfortably as possible, thereby improving their health-related quality of life in the time they have left.  Despite these benefits, it is surprising that one in four UK families miss out on such crucial support, particularly those from African or Caribbean descent. Research into EOLC for this particular group is scarce, probably because they represent only 3.3% of the UK population.  However a recent article on the disparities of access to EOLC services among Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups, suggest that ethnic minorities, as a whole, are less likely to engage in end-of-life care planning activities. I find this quite disheartening as this means that we do not know why engagement is low, despite national research calls for such information. A recent study shows that Black people are 4 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people, making it imperative that we understand and redress these disparities. As a Zimbabwean based in the UK, my roots play an important role in some of the decisions I make and I am interested to know whether some of the reasons why Black people do not engage with EOLC services are comparable across cultures.

So, what are we doing?

We have been actively recruiting participants through emails, posters, flyers, social media and a radio appearance. However, the uptake of recruitments is low, and I am going to take this opportunity to make an appeal for your help with recruitment. We are in desperate need and would really appreciate your help to share this opportunity with your wider network.

We are seeking bereaved relatives, health and social care professionals and community workers to take part in the study. We feel that professional carers, regardless of their ethnicity, could offer a different perspective on the subject since they offer a broad range of services and can be diverse in their provision, e.g. who they support and how.

If you are over 18 and you cared or provided support for someone of African and Caribbean descent who died (of any cause) during the pandemic, we want to hear from you. We want to know your views on how EOLC can be improved, particularly how barriers to good care and the inequity of care provision can be reduced.

How to get involved

If you are interested in taking part and would like more information, please email PEACE@newcastle.ac.uk, call 07708 649459 or follow the link below: https://www.opfpru.nihr.ac.uk/get-involved/#PEACE

In summary, my experience with the PEACE project so far has made me realise that Black people are less willing or reluctant to take part in health research. So, as we celebrate Black History Month and honour the historical contributions made by people of African and Caribbean descent, as academic researchers, we need to reflect on effective ways we can engage and attract people of African and Caribbean descent to take part in health research.