Dr. Rahwa Haile, an associate professor in the Public Health Department at SUNY Old Westbury, has been selected by the Women’s Empowerment Coalition of New York City as an honoree for their International Women’s Day event on March 8.
The nominating committee selected Haile based on her work breaking gender bias in the world of healthcare and academia. Only five women will be honored at this year’s event.
“Dr. Haile’s recognition as an honoree by the Women’s Empowerment Coalition speaks to the important work and impact that she has had within and beyond our campus community,” said President Timothy E. Sams. “The work she is doing, including her recent action research with the Brooklyn Movement Center, embodies our College mission, and makes me proud to see our unique educational experience put into practice for the good of our community.”
Since joining the College in 2011, Haile has created and taught several unique courses including “Black Lives Matter: US Health Inequities.” Her scholarly work is situated in the field of social epidemiology and centers around the ways in which intersecting structural inequalities linked to racism, political economy, and sexuality adversely impact health and well-being.
According to Haile: “currently I am working with organizers, researchers and other neighbors to better understand how forms of structural violence –centrally the carceral system and gentrification– produce health-related suffering among Black New Yorkers. The work I’m most excited about is movement public health: research that uses science not just to produce knowledge for its own sake, but to successfully build the community power necessary to demanding and acquiring Black access to the social conditions that sustain healthy, joyful lives.”
A resident of Brooklyn, Haile began her research career as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan working on large-scale projects that explored the social correlates of mental illness among U.S. Black communities.
This, in turn, inspired her research on the impacts of American anti-Black racism on health immigrants and their descendants; and how anti-Black racism intersects with other forms of inequality, like heterosexism, to exacerbate HIV risk among Black gay and bisexual men.
The Women’s Empowerment Coalition of NYC mission is to build power and unity among women from diverse communities through storytelling, education, organizing and leadership development. WECNYC brings women together to share their successes and challenges as members of marginalized communities providing civic, financial, professional, and other training and resources as means to empower and build capacity.
They build intergenerational solidarity among women from across immigrant communities to nurture formidable leaders in the fights for immigrant rights, women’s rights, and racial, social and economic justice.