Diversity,Equity,and Inclusion on the Frontlines of Education

It seems that every day we read another news report of a local school board rolling back efforts to promote equity in education and remediate the lack of diversity and inclusion in curricula. Consuming less attention in the popular press are state-led initiatives that also limit the teaching of diversity-based issues in public colleges and universities. According to an ongoing tracking study by PEN America, the advocacy group for free expression, the large majority of 70 bills, introduced in 28 states between 2021 and mid-2022, restricted higher education teaching and learning focused on race, racism, and gender (Myskow, 2022). This trend led to the issuing of a joint statement by PEN America and the American Association of Colleges and Universities warning about these efforts to limit free speech and academic freedom in public institutions of higher education (American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2022).

This charged political environment presents many challenges to those of us teaching in public colleges and universities. Health promotion values and practice are grounded in principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. As educators in health promotion and public health, we explicitly and openly strive to incorporate these principles in our curricula and institutions. We aim to help our students become professionals who will embody and practice diversity, equity, and inclusion in their work. Framed by this background, the September 2022 Issue of Pedagogy in Health Promotion focuses on educational approaches to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our objective is to contribute to and encourage the exchange of ideas and practices for addressing DEI in teaching and learning.

We open the Issue with a section focused on Pedagogy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This ethos is infused throughout the papers presented, which offer thoughtful commentary, research, and practice for teaching and learning that address diverse groups and marginalized populations. The perspectives commentary by James et al. (2022) raises the issue of the need for the health education field to increase representation of people with disabilities, a historically and frequently overlooked group. The authors suggest approaches for reducing systemic barriers and facilitating participation by people with disabilities, and they offer a number of concrete recommendations to promote inclusiveness in higher education and professional organizations. Przybyla and Kruger (2022) describe a course they developed to introduce undergraduate students to the historical and social drivers behind another marginalized group, those experiencing mass incarceration. The authors provide detailed information on the design and implementation of their curriculum, which includes innovative experiential learning components such as visiting a local drug court and holding center and a panel discussion by previously incarcerated individuals. By considering mass incarceration as a social determinant of health, the course helps students understand how it affects the well-being of communities. Osiecki and Mejia (2022) discuss their campus’s response to racialized violence in their “backyard” in Minnesota, and explain how they redesigned an undergraduate curriculum, focused on the social determinants of health, to incorporate a synthesis of public health and intersectionality analysis. They describe a variety of learning approaches to help students comprehend upstream factors shaping life in poor, urban communities as well as community assets and strengths. The need to provide specific training to health professionals so they can deliver services to particular marginalized groups is addressed in the paper by Burt et al. (2022). The findings from their pilot study of nutrition professionals indicate a lack of training in serving LGBTQ+ communities and people with mental or physical disabilities. The authors call for focused attention on how to adequately prepare health professionals to serve a range of marginalized groups. Creating safe environments is another critical dimension for supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. Addressing campus sexual violence requires a comprehensive approach that includes curricula designed to guide students’ perceptions of the issues involved, as developed by Johnson et al. (2022) in their course “Sex, Power, and Culture.” They found that both in-person and online course formats were associated with significant changes in students’ views of sexual violence.

Community engagement is an essential aspect of health promotion practice that is premised on principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The next section in this Issue addresses Pedagogy for Community Inclusion and Change. These papers offer a variety of service learning approaches for increasing student awareness of upstream factors affecting communities and developing students’ capacity to support community engagement in public health action. Immersive service learning was employed to help public health students develop a deeper understanding of U.S./Mexico border health issues (Lohr et al., 2022). The program is a model for community-academic engagement that enables students to learn how to examine systems and policies affecting community life and develop interventions that promote health equity. The paper by Batada et al. (2022) discusses a community-engaged curriculum utilizing a “data to action” approach to support local community-based advocacy. The authors describe the steps in the process leading to policy change and, ultimately, health equity-related outcomes. Student reflections demonstrate the value of raising their awareness of the meaning and value of community engagement in health promotion practice. Biber et al. (2022) combined community-based participatory research with an undergraduate experiential learning component to enhance academic capacity for achieving high-impact community-based practice. The paper is an informative case study for developing partnerships and curricula that promote student learning in the context of community collaboration. The final paper in the Issue integrates experiential learning and community engagement as a framework for the Master of Public Health internship (Humphries et al., 2022). The authors discuss guiding principles and important lessons for developing applied practice activities that respond to the self-identified needs of community organizations.

A common refrain expressed in many of the papers in this Issue is the importance of recognizing diversity across various communities and marginalized groups, and avoiding the assumption that a standardized DEI message and training approach is sufficient. This theme reflects basic health promotion principles of tailoring and starting where the people are. A critical step in cultivating this awareness is taking a “deep” approach to understanding and working with the groups and communities we aim to serve, reflecting another important principle and method of community-based health promotion. An additional message found in many of the articles in this Issue is the importance of viewing DEI in the context of upstream forces that influence the lived experience of marginalized groups and communities. These lessons help frame a pedagogy for DEI that can transcend individualistic approaches and transform it into a pedagogy for DEI praxis.

We invite future submissions that provide further perspectives, research, and models for how we as health promotion and public health educators can incorporate DEI into our pedagogy. We also welcome commentaries and best practices articles from those who are trying to navigate political environments averse to DEI in education so you can share your lessons and cultivate communities of practice. Our common goal is to develop meaningful pedagogies for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion as we continue our work on the frontlines of education.