Facilitated by the Center for Healthy Communities and Center for Workforce Development at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (within the College of Health and Human Services), the Health Equity Bonner Fellowship Pilot was established to provide diverse, historically marginalized, and/or first generation students with the opportunity to strengthen their leadership and engagement skills to support the Wilmington Community.
The Healthy NC Fellowship was piloted during the Spring 2021 semester, supported by a grant from the UNCW Office of Community Engagement and Applied Learning's Applied Learning Pedagogy initiative.
The Center for Healthy Communities (CHC) and Center for Workforce Development (CWD) lead the Healthy NC Fellows, to provide fellowship participants with the opportunity to enhance their leadership and communication skills. One hallmark of both the Fellowship program and the Implicit Bias webinar is a case study discussion. The Fellows created a Case Study on one of the Healthy NC 2030 indicators with a lens on Wilmington; this case study explores implicit bias as it relates to the chosen indicator (food access).
To promote the webinar resource as enduring material for optional future use in classrooms and implicit bias, equity, and food access education, our team developed an on-demand webinar. The webinar featured Education Specialist, Elizabeth Barfield-Forte from New Hanover Regional Medical Center’s (NHRMC) Health Equity Department. Elizabeth introduced the topic of Implicit Bias and our student leaders presented on their case study and discussed how food access relates to implicit bias, how implicit bias impacts interactions with clients/patients, and posed discussion questions to the SME, Elizabeth.
To prepare the students to lead the webinar, Elizabeth Barfield and Joe Conway of NHRMC Healthy Equity Department provided a 2-hour Everyday Bias Training followed by a presentation of Case studies at a future fellowship workshop. Also recommended by NHRMC, the student leaders read Everyday Bias by Howard J. Ross and engaged in a book study throughout the semester. Staff led the first book study discussion and fellows facilitated the remaining sessions.
In an effort to maintain the interactive piece of the webinar, the pre-recorded resource was uploaded into VoiceThread where our team left comments and encouraged participants to participate in the pre-and post-self-assessments. The webinar featured several resources for participants to continue exploring Implicit Bias.
Partners: New Hanover Regional Medical Center / Novant Health
To view the recorded webinar, register to receive the link to view: Implicit Bias Webinar