Desmond’s inaugural conference focuses on community
Photos by Lee Ferris
Ashley Collazo, acting director of the Mount’s Desmond Center for Community Engagement and Wellness, put it best: “The health and wellbeing of a community is everyone’s responsibility.”
To that end, the Desmond Center hosted its inaugural conference, “Healthy Communities: A Shared Responsibility Towards Wellness,” late in the Fall 2023 semester.
The event brought together experts from across all disciplines and sectors to demonstrate their interconnectedness and shared responsibility in fostering resilient and healthy communities.
“By creating a space for local organization leaders, service providers, community residents, and the Mount community to come together and explore what synergies exist between us all, we believe the conference not only served to reinvigorate the good work already being done here in Newburgh, but we are also hopeful that fresh ideas and new connections and opportunities for collaboration were forged,” noted Collazo. “We look forward to doing it again next year.”
The event kicked off with a panel discussion featuring Fr. Gregoire Fluet, Interim President of the Mount; Torrance Harvey ’03, mayor of Newburgh and a History teacher at Newburgh Free Academy North; Ray Simons, Attorney-in-Charge (City of Newburgh Office), Legal Services of the Hudson Valley; Dr. Alicia Pointer, Commissioner of the Orange County Department of Health; and Pamela Patterson, representative of the Newburgh Enlarged City School District. The panel was moderated by Giselle Martinez ’20, Newburgh Councilwoman.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Dana E. Crawford, a pediatric and clinical psychologist who developed the Crawford Bias Reduction Theory and Training (CBRT), a systematic approach to reducing bias, prejudice, and racism.
Crawford discussed how code switching – swapping between two or more ways of speaking depending on the situation – can tax our mental resources before we can even begin solving social problems and issues within the community, such as poverty and homelessness.
“We do code switching because our hope is that we will have better access to resources,” Crawford explained. “I say this as a Black woman, but everybody in here has had to code switch. You have to code switch if you present as a little too gay. You have to code switch in the clothing you wear… how you wear your hair…The ways we cannot fully be ourselves, that is code switching. Quite frankly, it uses up a lot of your cognition – your cognitive load – and we’ve got way too much work to do to be translating stuff in our brains before we even do the work.”
She added that by being one’s authentic self, community leaders can build an extra layer of trust with the people they serve.
The afternoon panel featured José Gomérez, City of Newburgh Police Commissioner; David M. Hoovler, Orange County District Attorney; Jenifer Lee-Gonyea, assistant vice president for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Chief Diversity Officer at the Mount; Isabel Rojas, Deputy Director of Strategies and Intervention at the National Network for Safe Communities; and Orenzo Charles, SNUG program manager. The panel was moderated by Inaudy Gil Esposito, executive director for the Orange County Human Rights Commission and Strategic Advisory Board Member for the Desmond Center.
The conference concluded with four engaging breakout sessions: “How Health Literacy Supports Health Equity” by Mount Education professors Janine Bixler and Rebecca Norman; “Cultural Competence and Patient Advocacy Across Diverse Populations” by Nursing professors Lynette DeBellis and Linda Kelly; “Challenges in the Midst of Poverty: Understanding the Social Determinants in Practice” by adjunct professor Michele McKeon; and “Newburgh at the Crosswords: An Overview of Environmental Justice Concerns” by Ronald Zorrilla, founder of Outdoor Promise.
