Click here to download the entire letter of invitation
Click here to download the application for the request for presentations
Registration will open SOON. Please check back.
Alameda County Behavioral Health (ACBH) cordially invites
you to submit a proposal to present at the 2021 California Health Equity
Summit: Healing Communities Beyond 2020: Our Health,
Our Culture, Our Climate.
#ElevatingVoices, scheduled for June 10-11, 2021. This cultural
event is sponsored by Alameda County Behavioral Health (ACBH) and will be the
Summit’s first virtual event.
Twenty Twenty (2020) was the start of a new decade and we
decided to retire the title Cultural Competence Summit and introduce a more
inclusive summit title to now be called—California Health Equity Summit. While
the new title is looking through the lens of Health Equity, the focus is still
on behavioral health. The 2021 California Health Equity Summit is accepting
submissions for presentations and/or workshops that highlight projects,
programs, methods, activities, and/or interventions that use various healing,
wellness and recovery practices, and with a continued focus on behavioral
health. There is an emphasis on cultural healing practices as well as
traditional medicine that are intended to reach California’s diverse
populations.
The 2021 Summit will offer an opportunity to engage and
deliver a range of cultural healing practices through innovative workshops and
presentations to promote learning and to advance cultural humility, social
justice, and equity throughout organizations and systems to effectively meet
the diverse needs of consumers, individuals, families, and communities.
At the start of the first two quarters of 2020, our lives
were turned upside down due to a series of events like the coronavirus,
widespread racial injustices and wildfires. As a result, we are making the
necessary adjustments to this year’s Summit by expanding the scope to include a
space to respond to those horrendous events. Not only will we move to a virtual
platform, but we are asking presenters to explore the behavioral health
implications of those additional events and introduce indigenous/traditional
healing practices to aid in the response and that allows for healing.
Workshops and presentations are expected to focus on
proven cultural practices (evidence-based or community-defined) that
deliver a message of inclusivity and healing across all diverse and cultural
communities by responding to the power dynamics, oppression and privilege that have
impacted the delivery of equitable services within the behavioral health
setting. The summit will also highlight innovative ways to honor and
recognize the changing cultural and linguistic demographics of California. We
can stand to learn a great deal about diverse communities, traditions and
healing practices and apply them to our behavioral health service delivery
programs and services.
More specifically, this year’s
summit will focus on cultural healing practices that stem from Traditional
Medicines that complement conventional Western treatments. We are looking for
cultural healing practices that have been integrated into systems of care that
parallel with Western practices and help to improve behavioral health outcomes
for adults, children, and family members.