The Barbara Wand Seminar in Professional Ethics, Standards and Conduct

Fostering Equity Competencies

Janet Mawhinney, MA
Rani Srivastava, RN, Ph.D., FCAN

Monday, November 28, 2022
1 pm to 4 pm

Issues of diversity, power, equity & inclusion are core to clinical practice and system leadership and require capacities in the domains of awareness, knowledge and skills – applied in a range of settings. Practice includes the individual (micro), team (meso), and organizational or system (macro) domains of navigating difference.

Psychologists can play an important role in individual and population wellbeing across diverse cultures and communities. Providers and planners today have access to robust evidence of social, economic and health disparities. We are also in the midst of heightened activism and awareness on many fronts, including movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM); First Nations, Inuit, and Metis (FNIM) Reconciliation work; # Me Too and #Time’s Up. With these two realities we are seeing both heightened expectations for, and enhanced commitments to, change – in service design, delivery, leadership, and outcomes for individuals, communities and populations that have been marginalized and experience poorer health outcomes. However, moving from awareness to committed actions and practice change is challenging. Just as with any clinical or leadership skill, strategies for working across disparities and differences are learned competencies requiring commitment, guidance and practice.

This (session/workshop) is grounded in principles of equity, human rights, power and privilege, and the necessity of embracing ongoing learning. The complex and dynamic nature of cultural diversity, equity, and human rights requires practitioners to engage in ongoing learning and unlearning and an ability to navigate across a spectrum of power/privilege/marginalization issues. With this non static lens of professional practice and the social context we must recognize that everyone will have both areas of expertise and nescience in their equity skills.

In this session we will:

• provide a broad framework of core domains of equity practice that can be applied with multiple theories/approaches
• examine the impact of culture as patterns and power
• frame both the foundational knowledge and the need for ongoing population/issue/culture specific knowledge and skill development
• provide opportunity for peer breakout group discussion, reflection on application to practice and other interactive engagement.