Examining Mass Incarceration Through a Public Health Lens
Mass incarceration’s negative impact on individuals’ health is significant and far-reaching in many ways, ultimately afflicting families and communities with mental health issues and other health problems related to the stress of incarcerated loved ones. These urgent and alarming health concerns affect a majority of people of color, often with few services available and limited access to healthcare.
The Fortune Society will hosted a webinar entitled Examining Mass Incarceration’s Impact Through a Public Health Lens which will bring together a diverse panel of notable experts to explore the many facets of this crucially important topic.
Meet our Panelists:
Dr. Onaje Muid: Dr. Onaje Muid is a transformative, decolonizing innovator who has over 35 years of experience in perfecting a functional application of human rights principles in social service environments. These professional and community experiences occurred in substance use prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery settings, both outpatient and residential. He was recognized as a social work leader when inducted as a fellow into the New York Academy of Medicine in 2015. He holds a doctorate and master’s degree in social work and other related discipline credentials in substance use counseling, mental health and psychodrama. He currently leads the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) Health Commission and maintains that the prison industrial complex is part of a nationwide oppression that can only be resolved through reparations.
Romarilyn Ralston: Romarilyn Ralston is the executive director of College & Community Fellowship, an organization that helps justice-involved women and their families access opportunity and higher education. She identifies as a Black feminist prison abolitionist with an incarceration experience.
Victoria Law: Victoria Law is a freelance journalist who focuses on the intersections of incarceration, gender, and resistance. She is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 20212) and “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2021) and the co-author of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (The New Press, 2020). She is also a co-founder of NYC Books Through Bars, an all-volunteer group that sends free books to people in prison.
Christopher Wildemann: Christopher Wildemann is a Professor of Sociology at the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University, where he is also the Director of the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN), hosted by Cornell University and Duke University. Since 2019, he has been Professor at the ROCKWOOL Foundation Research Unit in Copenhagen, Denmark. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from Princeton University in 2008 and his postdoctoral training from 2008 to 2010 as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Jennifer Clarke: Dr. Jennifer Clarke is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and is the Director of health disparities research at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island. She has been working as an internist at the women’s prison in Rhode Island since 1998 and also serves as a prisoner representative on the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Miriam Hospital/Lifespan IRB. Her research interests include incarcerated populations, women’s health, substance use and reproductive health.
David Cloud: David Cloud serves as the Research Director for Amend at the University of California, San Fransisco School of Medicine. He was previously a Senior Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in the Center for Sentencing and Corrections. He has researched the intersection of criminal justice, HIV, substance use and comorbidities and has many publications on solitary confinement.
Dr. Dana Rice: Dana Rice, Dr.PH is the assistant dean for master’s degrees and an assistant professor of public health leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Rice’s work examines the best practices in public health leadership and community engagement with a health equity, social justice and human rights lens. Her specific area of focus is on examining the impact of mass criminalization and mass incarceration on public health. Prior to coming to UNC, Dr. Rice spent 20 years working in public, private and non-profit sectors. Her most recent work was dedicated to directing all health promotion and disease prevention programs in a large urban jail and training graduate public health and medical students in translating applied public health practice skills to a variety of community settings.