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To keep you connected to current issues and topics discussed in the Flagship Program, LT shares reflections and resources from our Challenge Days. New this year, we are pairing Challenge Days together. This change is intended to support connections across Challenge Days, allowing the class to dive deeper into regional challenges while also building skills for effective leadership and cultivating belonging. The Health and Wellbeing (March 10, 2022) and Education (April 13, 2022) Challenge Days are paired this year.

The Health and Wellbeing Challenge Day was centered around these questions: How do we address anti-Black racism and zero-sum thinking while uplifting each other’s strengths to reimagine possibilities for liberation? What would our society look like if we believed in supporting and investing in the potential of all young people?

To get a feel for the full day, read the agenda HERE. For a list of resources related to this Challenge Day, read the prework HERE. Read below to read reflections from three LT'22 class members.

Many thanks to Virginia Mason Franciscan Health for their sponsorship of this day and leadership in our community.

From Problem to Possibility

Dr. Ben Danielson, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington; Sean Goode, Executive Director, CHOOSE 180; Felicia Ishino, LT’21, Curriculum Committee

In Dr. Ben Danielson and Sean Goode's conversation, facilitated by Felicia Ishinio, LT'21, they spoke about reframing problems as possibilities. In the midst of the pandemic and commitments toward racism as a public health crisis, what changes are they seeing? What hopes do they have for creating wellbeing for all people?

Charmila's Reflections

Charmila Ajmera, LT'22, Washington State Department of Health

The centerpiece of our Health & Wellness Challenge Day was a conversation between Dr. Ben Danielson and Sean Goode, facilitated by LT’21 alumni Felicia Ishino.

As a new employee at the Washington State Department of Health, I had been looking forward to this conversation between two people who have thought deeply about public health and its operation within a racist system. Right away, Sean helped me completely shift my perspective when he questioned King County’s June 2020 declaration of Racism as a Public Health Crisis, pointing out that the reframing of racism as a public health issue served as an off-ramp for accountability. Such a declaration, aside from stating what POC have known for 400 years, was a way for those in the dominant culture to abdicate their responsibility to address racism in all of its wide and varied forms. Defining racism as a public health crisis implies that it needs public health solutions, in the narrow confines of how we define ‘public health,’ instead of a crisis in all of the many, varied, pernicious ways racism shows up in every aspect of American life - from housing, to the criminal legal system, to environmental harms. As Felicia pointed out, what is actually needed is a broadening of the problem so we can broaden the solutions.

So often in the healthcare and wider public health system, white dominant culture views health in terms of pathology - another narrowing. We clinicalize health. We diagnose, then treat the diagnosis. But as Dr. Danielson pointed out to us, we have an opportunity to scrutinize this narrative. And as Sean said, we also have an opportunity to radically expand and reframe wellness. He invited us to ask ourselves what it would look like to view wellness as a holistic journey, rather than a series of visits to the doctor and the pharmacy.

What would a healthcare system, a public health system, a society, look like if we centered, amplified, and elevated dignity, wellness, and healing? What would our experience of the world be if we honored each other’s dignity; created systems that allowed each of us to prioritize and support our wellness; if we were all fully compelled to be well, to focus on healing instead of punishment, and believed that everyone deserved to be on a healing journey?

As I ponder these questions daily in my role at the Department of Health, I am also compelled to work with my colleagues and partners to broaden our understanding of public health and to consider the ways in which we live our whole lives: the accessibility of housing, the ability to nourish ourselves with healthy foods, our options for traveling safely and in ways that don’t pollute our air and water, and our opportunities to connect with one another. All of these factors intersect and impact our physical, mental, and communal health.

The last observation Dr. Danielson and Sean left us with is the fact that we currently live in a world of ‘anti-’ language. Anti-racism, anti-blackness, anti-bias - these are all words I hear daily in public health. We certainly have the language of anti- and disparity, but do we have the language of hope? Of possibility? Since our Challenge Day, I’ve made it a daily practice to mitigate my ‘anti’ language and instead focus on using a language of possibility. To keep asking myself, ‘How can I work towards a broadening of public health and center dignity, wellness, and healing for the people we serve?’

Alicia's Reflections

Alicia Teel, LT'22, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

Coming out of our Health and Wellbeing Challenge Day, I so appreciated the humble leadership modeled by our guest speakers, Dr. Ben Danielson and Sean Goode, in their conversation with Felicia Ishino. From Dr. Danielson’s remarks, I’m reflecting on the belief that even as a leader, you won’t have all the answers – and there will be big, important questions where you have expertise and still may need to work through the right path. From Sean’s closing thoughts, I am reflecting on the importance of honoring what we stand in the midst of, and of slowing down to be grounded in my present, even as I look to the future.

I’m also grateful for the time we had on this Challenge Day to reflect on the power of language. Dr. Danielson encouraged our cohort to think about how we develop the language for where we want to go – not just defining the places we are running from, as we see in words like antiracism and disproportionality. In our Open Space time, I enjoyed the opportunity to dig in to language even more, and to reflect with others in the cohort about the connection, and sometimes lack thereof, between language and action on race, repair, and inclusion, and how we grapple with that both personally and professionally.

Imagining Possibilities

After the conversation with Dr. Ben Danielson and Sean Goode, Shomari Jones, LT'10, asked the class to consider what actions THEY could take. In groups of three, class members were asked to reflect: Thinking beyond today, what is a place in your life in which you have influence personally or professionally that this conversation can inform and influence how you show up.

Brittany's Reflections

Brittany Lovely, LT'22, Washington State Department of Commerce

Raw accountability is a value I respect in a leader. Showing up as your whole self and making space for authenticity gives people the blessing of you and empowers others to show up the same way. My subconscious belief that leaders have the right answers has been thoroughly challenged, and I have been reflecting on my views of leadership.

I think, instead of having all the right answers, leaders have the ability to listen with curiosity and act with love and understanding. They inspire others to explore themselves and empower others to act. The Health and Wellness Challenge Day allowed me to explore my definition of liberation and I found that this looked like the decolonization of my own mind and body and the deconstruction of the systems that cause harm and oppress. While exploring these concepts of health and wellness, I found some more clarity in my passion for social change.

Special Thanks to our

Challenge Day Sponsor!