Keynote Dr. Jessica Isom - The Urgency of Now: Disrupting Racism In Pain Management

About: Our shared and dissimilar histories, perceptions, and cultures are shaped by the tools we use to experience the world and the information we absorb and apply to our experiences. This interaction in a society structured around a perceived racial hierarchy buttressed by structural and cultural racism produces racially biased perceptions and cultures that distort and disrupt our capacity to provide equitable health care services.
In order to provide high quality services to all those in need, we must acknowledge these histories, perceptions as well as cultures and subvert their impact on rapport-building, diagnoses, treatment interventions and resource allocation in pain management. Negative stereotypes, racial prejudice and racially biased behaviors continue to be powerfully impactful within health care despite the egalitarian norms we purport to hold as health care professionals.
Thus, we must center racial equity as a foundational step towards disrupting racism in pain management successfully.
Citations:
Castillo EG, Isom J, DeBonis KL, Jordan A, Braslow JT, Rohrbaugh R. Reconsidering Systems-Based Practice: Advancing Structural Competency, Health Equity, and Social Responsibility in Graduate Medical Education. Acad Med. 2020 Dec;95(12):1817-1822. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003559. PMID: 32590465; PMCID: PMC8279228.
Nweke, Nkemjika & Isom, Jessica & Walters, Shekinah-Fashaw. (2022). Health Equity Tourism: Reckoning with Medical Mistrust. Journal of Medical Systems. 46. 10.1007/s10916-022-01812-4.
Isom, Jessica & Williams, J. & Mathis, Myra. (2022). The words we use. 10.1016/B978-0-12-818954-2.00011-0.
Jordan, Ayana & Martinez, Caridad & Isom, Jessica. (2021). Incorporating a Race Equity Framework into Opioid Use Disorder Treatment. 10.1007/978-3-030-80818-1_13.
Isom, Jessica & Jordan, Ayana & Goodsmith, Nichole & Medlock, Morgan & DeSouza, Flavia & Shadravan, Sonya & Halbert, Etuajie & Hairston, Danielle & Castillo, Enrico & Rohrbaugh, Robert. (2021). Equity in Progress: Development of Health Equity Curricula in Three Psychiatry Residency Programs. Academic Psychiatry. 45. 10.1007/s40596-020-01390-y.
Dr. Jessica Elizabeth Isom is an early career community psychiatrist, public speaker, medical educator and consultant for diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism projects. Driven by a passion for collaborative leadership, she takes pride in providing the conceptual frameworks and psychological safety necessary to expand the growing edges of her clients and peers.
Dr. Isom draws on her psychiatric training and humble background to
connect across differences in power, education, and perspective to foster a collaborative approach to achieving racial justice and equity in medicine and beyond. As a resident in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, she was selected as the Chief Resident of Medical Education and as the Chief Resident of Diversity and Inclusion.
Her strong training background and leadership experiences inform her
current role in Boston, MA at Codman Square Health Center. She formerly
served as a leader within the American Psychiatric Association Assembly,
where her contributions centered on illuminating the need for health equity
in organized psychiatry. She was also elected to the Councilor position for
the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society where she served for one year.
Within the Yale Department of Psychiatry residency program, she is a faculty track leader for the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum. Currently, she is devoting considerable time to growing her consulting company, Vision for Equity LLC, which she has expanded into a nationally sought out team of antiracism coaches and organizational trainers.