Black Women and Resilience: Power, Perseverance, and Public Health

Black Women and Resilience brings together a wealth of qualitative and quantitative research to help foster broad understanding and advancement of Black women’s collective health and wellbeing. Throughout, Kisha Braithwaite Holden, Camara Phyllis Jones, and their contributors use a health equity lens, maintaining that achieving health equity requires valuing all individuals and populations equally, recognizing and rectifying historical injustices, and providing resources according to need. Across four sections, scholars, practitioners, and community leaders address cultural narratives of Black womanhood; significant health issues affecting Black women; trauma, stressors, and strategies for healing; and advocacy for social justice and collective action. Multivocal and multidisciplinary, Black Women and Resilience models and invites exchange across sectors and specializations while consistently centering the experiences and contributions of Black women as catalysts for transformation.

Kisha Braithwaite Holden is a Psychologist, Professor, Pouissaint-Satcher Endowed Chair in Mental Health, and Associate Director for Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine. She is the coauthor (with Henrie Treadwell and Clare Xanthos) of The Social Determinants of African-Americans and coeditor of African American Women: An Annotated Bibliography with her mentor Veronica Thomas. Camara Phyllis Jones is a family physician, epidemiologist, and Past President of the American Public Health Association whose work focuses on naming, measuring, and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of our nation and the world. She is an elected member of both the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is currently a Commissioner on the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health.