Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity

We are pleased to continue the Achievers Award Program recognizing and highlighting underrepresented minorities across Johns Hopkins Medicine who exemplify excellence and exhibit our Johns Hopkins core values. Recipients will be recognized during LGBTQ+ Pride Month in June.

Johns Hopkins Medicine faculty, staff and learners who meet the following criteria are eligible to be nominated:

• Must be of the LGBTQ+ community
• Employed at Johns Hopkins for at least 1 year
• Must be in good standing (attendance and good performance evaluations)
• Must exemplify JHM core values
• Demonstrates contributions to the communities they serve and/or represent
• Contributes to the healthcare field and/or their surrounding communities

Award recipients will be profiled on the Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Diversity and Inclusion website, on Inside Hopkins, and at signature Employee Resource Group events during the month of June.

Please take a moment to nominate a deserving colleague for this award. The nomination period will run through April 30, 2021.

Do you have questions about the COVID-19 vaccines? Check out these resources that can help answer your questions.

1. ​​​​ COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Playlist on YouTube
   • The videos topics are:
     • What You Need to Know #1: Clinical Trials and How They Work
     • What You Need to Know #2: Explanation of Operation Warp Speed
     • What You Need to Know #3: mRNA Vaccine Technology
     • What You Need to Know #4: Pfizer Vaccine Trial Information
     • What You Need to Know #5: Moderna Vaccine Trial Information
     • What You Need to Know #6: Vaccine Allocation - Who Gets the Vaccine
     • What You Need to Know #7: Monitoring Vaccine Safety
     • COVID-19 Disparities in the Black/African American Community
     • COVID-19 Disparities in the Latinx/Hispanic Community
     • JHM COVID-19 Vaccine Community Education and Outreach
2. Pfizer and Moderna Vaccine Clinical Trial Demographics
3. People of Color and COVID-19: Addressing Health Disparities and Vaccine Equity
4. Center for American Indian Health: COVID-19 Resources for Native American Communities
5. Información y actualizaciones sobre el coronavirus (COVID-19) (in Spanish)
6. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL)

As we face this unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak, we would like to highlight available resources for our Johns Hopkins employees and the within our community.

JHM Internal Staff Resources
JHM Internal Clinical Resources
Johns Hopkins Children’s Center Resources for Families
Johns Hopkins Community Resources
Spanish Patient COVID website 
Equity for COVID-19 Vaccines and Care

The Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity are excited to offer challenge coins for our employees that are retired military, veterans or active duty. These unique Johns Hopkins Medicine coins were custom made and we are proud to provide them to our employees in recognition of their service. Due to the limited staffing at some locations, at this time, the coins are only available at the locations listed below.

Everyone requesting a coin, must follow these steps:

1. Complete this survey so that we can ensure the coins are going to our military staff. Your name will also be added to the JHM Veterans listserv, to receive notifications regarding the JHM Veterans Employee Resource Group and other information pertinent to being a veteran at JHM.
2. Contact one of the following representatives to make arrangements to pick up your coin.

• JHH/JHHS -- Kelly Greene, HR Suite Osler 7
• All Children’s -- Mel Boynton, HR
• Bayview -- Gary Young, HR
• Howard County -- Lisa Mendez-Bovell, HR
• Suburban Hospital – Theresa Mazzaro, HR
• Sibley Memorial – Kate Mancusi , HR
• Home Care Group -- Mike Rammacca, HR

To the Johns Hopkins Medicine community

Dear Colleagues,

Last week we witnessed the horrific killings in Atlanta of eight members of our collective community, including six women of Asian descent. The names of all of the deceased are Soon C. Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong A. Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan and Daoyou Feng. We not only hold the families of the departed in our hearts but also, our entire Johns Hopkins Medicine Asian and Pacific Islander community.

The message from JHU President Daniels, Dr. Rothman and Mr. Sowers following this tragic event condemned these acts of violence and discrimination, and expressed their commitment to upholding the values of equity and humanity. As an African American, I know what it is like to walk down the street, uncertain of how my family and I are being viewed and worrying that we might be targeted in some way just because of our racial and/or ethnic identity. This is the experience that many in our Asian and Pacific Islander community have been navigating over the past year as anti-Asian violence has escalated across our nation. Since March 19, 2020, the Asian and Pacific Islander community has reported experiencing over 3,795 hate crimes.

While it may appear that anti-Asian sentiments in our nation are new, they are not and have evolved due to structural racism dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This was the first law restricting immigration into the United States due to race. Hundreds of South Asian and Filipino immigrants were brutalized and murdered in the early 1900s, and following the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II over 120,000 Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps. As an organization, we will explore this history in greater depth during Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in a Journeys in Healing Structural Racism Town Hall in May.

I want to remind everyone of the importance of allyship for our colleagues of Asian and Pacific Island descent across JHM. JHM leadership and the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity are committed to listening, understanding, and implementing strategies to continue advancing and strengthening our commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Many of you have asked what you can do to support our Asian and Pacific Islander employees, trainees and students.

• Send a note to ask your colleagues how they are. If they are willing to talk and share, be a good listener and resist the temptation to give answers or try to solve the problem.
• Similarly, use departmental discussions and town halls to listen to the needs and recommendations of your colleagues instead of assuming what their needs are (Racial Discussion Resources).
• Educate yourself about the history and experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders in our country.
• Volunteer and support organizations promoting inclusion.
• Amplify the voices of the Asian and Pacific Islander community
• Speak up and be an ally

If you are interested in joining our Asian and Pacific Islander Interest Group to participate in planning for our May events, please email diversity@jhmi.edu. Visit the racial discussion resources page of our website for additional resources for supporting the Asian and Pacific Islander community promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. #HopkinsStrongerTogether!

Sincerely,

Sherita Hill Golden, M.D., M.H.S.

Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer

Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity

Johns Hopkins Medicine

To the Johns Hopkins Medicine Community

Dear Colleagues,

The mission of Johns Hopkins Medicine speaks to the values of our organization — namely, to “improve the health of the community and the world by setting the standard of excellence in medical education, research and clinical care.” Deeply embedded in this objective is the recognition that our institution cannot fulfill its mission without appropriately focusing on the values that guide us. This can be best described as our embrace of diversity and inclusion.

Johns Hopkins Medicine is fully committed to serving the broader community. We must, and will, celebrate not only what makes us individually different and unique, but also what binds us together as a society. The health and well-being of the people we serve as an historic medical institution is critically important. Also vital is our respect for everyone employed by our organization, as well as anyone with whom our institution comes into contact. Johns Hopkins supports the noble cause of promoting social justice and joins the greater community, both near and far, in condemning and opposing racism, bigotry and intolerance in all forms.

Black lives do indeed matter. This nation’s history does not always reflect the lofty sentiments expressed in its founding documents. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not ideals originally afforded to everyone. For far too long, our nation has struggled to ensure equal justice under law for all its citizens. From the abolition of slavery, to efforts to desegregate how we interacted with one another in public places, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, finding a more perfect union has always been our shared burden.

Now, present day, we occupy another defining moment in our nation’s history. A time when we are presented with yet another opportunity to demonstrate that we, collectively, can rise above partisanship and deeply entrenched cultural beliefs to become better versions of ourselves. We can, and must, face this opportunity collectively. In doing so, we have the ability to steer the direction of our nation to its proper path. As an institution, Johns Hopkins Medicine is committed to undertaking this endeavor by doing its part to foster understanding, collaboration and dialog designed to bridge whatever artificial divides or obstacles have served as barriers to progress in the past.

Black Lives Matter is not a political statement. Rather, it is the expression of a core value and principle that was unfortunately long denied to many of our citizens. Just as with White Coats for Black Lives, it is a statement of peace and solidarity that our organization embraces, not a comment meant to sow division and mistrust.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remarked, “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” These powerful words recognize that we are united by a common destiny. One that requires shared sacrifice and mutual understanding. Together, we have the power to make permanent and lasting change for the better. And together, we can create a better future for the generations that follow. We are guided by these values, and we will live up to our obligations.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.

Dean of the Medical Faculty

CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Kevin W. Sowers, M.S.N., R.N., F.A.A.N.

President, Johns Hopkins Health System

EVP, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Inez Stewart, M.Ed.

Senior Vice President

Chief Human Resources Officer

Johns Hopkins Medicine

JHM Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Health Equity
Fast Facts Definition Sheet

Diversity: Any collective mixture characterized by differences including (but not limited to) socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability status, or veteran status. Diversity focuses on representation.

• Being invited to the dance.

Inclusion: A practice of encouraging belonging and participation and celebration of differences. Inclusion focuses on involvement.

• Being asked to dance.

Equity: According to the World Health Organization, equity is the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically; equity is the process and equality is the outcome (see the graphic below). Equity focuses on justice.

• A practice of addressing the unique barriers that disadvantage a subset of the population because of their differences—providing transportation for those who do not have a ride to the dance.

Download the full fact sheet