Racial Foundations of Public Policy: Health policy

Racial Foundations of Public Policy is a speaker series that focuses on the historical roots and impact of race in shaping public policy as both a disciplinary field and as a course of action. Through it, we bring in renowned scholar-experts from across the country to be in conversation with Dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the founding director of the Center for Racial Justice at the Ford School of Public Policy. The series is open to all members of the University of Michigan community and the wider public.

This event will be presented virtually, with a community watch party available in Weill Hall's Betty Ford Auditorium.

About the speaker

Steven W. Thrasher, Ph.D., is the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting (with an emphasis on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community) and an assistant professor of journalism.

Thrasher has worked as writer-at-large at the Guardian, staff writer at the Village Voice, and facilitator for the NPR StoryCorps project. His articles are regularly published in the New York Times, BuzzFeed News, Esquire, the Nation, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Daily Beast. He’s also a former researcher for Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”

Thrasher will teach Medill courses in journalism at the graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as elective classes cross-listed with American Studies, African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies.

In Ferguson the same week Michael Brown was killed in 2014, Thrasher has reported on the Black Lives Matter movement for five years. His research combines journalistic and ethnographic methods to study how racism, homophobia, policing, medicine, incarceration, culture, and health intersect.

A scholar of the criminalization of HIV/AIDS, Thrasher’s work centers on marginalized populations. As a teacher, he encourages students to draw upon history, theory, culture, and reporting to critically read and create media narratives. Research and reporting areas include U.S. Civil Rights; international histories of LGBTQ and gender identities; social movements; court reporting; media frames; colonialism; critical race theory; queer methods; policing; art criticism; public health reporting; and HIV/AIDS history.

Thrasher is a frequent guest on NPR, CNN, and Democracy Now. He has also lectured extensively at universities and cultural institutions internationally, including the San Francisco Public Library, the Schomburg Center in Harlem, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the American University of Beirut.

Faculty Expert

Celeste M. Watkins-Hayes

Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy; Director, Center for Racial Justice; Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy; University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor; Professor of Sociology; Research and Community Impact Fellow, Anti-Racism Collaborative

Watkins-Hayes is an internationally-recognized scholar and expert on HIV/AIDS; urban poverty; social policy; and racial, class, and gender inequality. Her work illuminates social problems of great interest to scholars, communities, and policymakers. She works at the intersection of sociology, African American Studies, and public policy. Her work analyzes the impact of the HIV epidemic on women and the growth of the HIV safety net.

• health policy
• Celeste Watkins-Hayes
• Steven Thrasher
• race
• healthcare
• Health
• Center for Racial Justice