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COVID Conversation Symposium Part2 (Time zone: EST)

Accessibility : Unfortunately, we are not able to provide live ASL, live captioning or French interpretation at this time — this is something we are working on for future events.

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Part 2

Thursday June 4th

7:00 – 9:00pm EST

The COVID-19 pandemic: Big tech, privatization, surveillance, AI and the rush for data

Naomi Klein and LLana James lay out the epic stakes of the growing struggles around data, technology, AI and COVID-19. Power, race(ism), and money shape every development related to big tech: who owns it, how and why it gets used. What do we need to consider during the pandemic if privacy, human rights and universal access to health care are to remain intact and sustainable post pandemic.

What are the risks and benefits of adding (more) race-based data to an AI, data-driven economy, awash in a sea of algorithmic racism? Your electronic medical and health record (EMR/EHR) are being mined, without your informed consent. Who benefits? What are the potential short and long-term implications? What supports and protections are needed? What questions should we be asking about data brokers, public-private partnerships, surveillance, privatization and the unregulated rush for data in the midst of the pandemic. Facilitated by Rinaldo Walcott. Followed by question and answer.

Discussants (click on names to read bios)

Naomi Klein
LLana James

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Friday June 5th

2:00 – 4:00pm EST

Surveilling the surveilled: Race-based data and the role of epidemiology and public health in mapping, monitoring and ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patricia O’Campo, Sam Tecle, and Laura Rosella explore the history, methods, assumptions, and limitations of public health practice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, artificial intelligence, and calls for race-based data. What is the role of scientific racism in both the history and current practice of public health? What kind of narratives come out of public health and epidemiology, and what consequences do these narratives have on the ground? 

How can public health practitioners control for potential harms – including narrative harms? What are the boundaries and responsibilities of health/public health researchers, and what would constitute a pragmatic, ethical and forward-looking response to the current situation? Finally, and centrally, how can public health, data analytics and epidemiology be made accountable to communities? Followed by question and answer period.

Discussants: (click on names to read bios)

Patricia O’Campo
Sam Tecle
Laura Rosella

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Saturday June 6th

10:00am – 12:30pm

Black Futures: Radically rethinking leadership in public health, medicine, and research during the pandemic and beyond

If public health professionals, physicians, and other health care leaders fail to reckon with the current confluence of surveillance, AI, race-based data and profit, it will fall to future generations to live with the consequences. What are young visionary public health, emerging physicians and researchers concerned about right now?

Jo-Ann Osei-Twum, GB Olarewaju and Ciann Wilson explore how we can work together to hand off radically different health care and public health systems, ones that foster well-being in Black communities and beyond. Followed by a question and answer period.

Discussants: (click on names to read bios)

Jo-Ann Osei-Twum
GB Olarewaju
Ciann Wilson

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Closing Ceremony: Joanna Meawasige-Vautour