In This Story
Public Health assistant professor Marybeth Mitcham was accepted into the third cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing (COHLI) fellowship. The fellowship involves an 18-month leadership experience that uses the truth, racial healing and transformation™ framework (TRHT ™) to strengthen the ecosystem of leaders advancing racial and health equity in their work.
"I am humbled and excited for this opportunity, to learn from people whom I highly respect as experts in their field, and to continue to hear—and learn from — others' stories!” says Mitcham.
Mitcham’s focus is on how racial healing and relationship building and change through storytelling can improve public health.
“Ultimately, I want to help people—especially those who are from historically marginalized and repressed communities—to have the knowledge they need to make informed decisions to improve their lives through healthier outcomes. But I must take the time to listen to their stories, hear what they have to say, and apply their truth to their community's story (creating narrative change as part of healing and relationship building) in order for any effort that I try to help implement to be effective,” says Mitcham.
Whether her public health work has focused on food insecurity, environmental health disparities, loneliness, nutritional deficiencies, or anything else, Mitcham says, the commonality of fostering open and safe conversations, and hearing others' stories, has been fundamentally important.
“Narrative change is so fundamentally important because it allows repressed voices to finally be heard, without being stifled,” says Mitcham. “Narrative change involves a shift in perspective, reinforced through truth-telling. What someone may share about an event or experience may become the authorized version of that event or experience, but may not be the true story, either due to sharing an incomplete picture of the event (only one perspective without the balance of others), or due to a false narrative.”
Supplementing what she learns in the fellowship, Mitcham will participate in the Promoting Indigenous Research Leadership workshop, which is offered through a collaborative partnership between NIH, the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity, Montana State University, and Arizona State University. The workshop helps early investigators build community, receive mentorship, and improve NIH grant application skills related to American Indian/Alaska Native populations.
Through the COHLI fellowship, she will attend monthly workshops, receive one-on-one coaching sessions, collaborate with other Fellows on projects, work to refine and improve the scope of her existing work, and, she hopes, forge new partnerships and strategies to promote change.
Mitcham is an assistant professor and the director of the Online MPH Program. Her research focuses on the interplay between humans and their environment, leveraging available resources to achieve better community health outcomes, and exploring intergenerational and interdisciplinary approaches to foster personal connectedness. She uses qualitative and mixed-methods research approaches and believes in the power of storytelling.