Your Health Unlocked Episodes
043: Public Health and the Environmental Harms of Extractive Capitalism with Kelley Dennings
April 12, 2024
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Episode Trailer
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The NWHN is a DC-based nonprofit that works to improve health by strategically shaping policy, expanding health care access, and providing accurate, unbiased health information. A lot has changed in women’s health since 1975, the year we were founded. In this live recording of our very first podcast episode, we spoke with Byllye Avery, Cynthia Gutierrez, and Rachel Branaman, three giants in the policy and programming space. Together, we discussed the history, present, and future of the women’s health movement in the U.S., and how we can better fight for health care access and equity for all.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How the women’s health movement has changed from the 1970’s until today
- What helps move the movement forward, and what acts as barriers toward progress
- About the power of storytelling, direct action, and why one brave woman chose to hide speculums in a box marked “toys”
- How intersectional, trauma-informed care can make all the difference for patients (and what it looks like)
More about the Panelists:
Our first panelist, Byllye Y. Avery, is a health care activist, past board member of the NWHN, and founder of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the first national organization to specialize in Black women’s reproductive health issues. A proponent of reproductive justice, Byllye Avery has worked to develop health care services and education that address Black women’s mental and physical health. Byllye has received the MacArthur Foundation’s Fellowship for Social Contribution and the Gustav O. Lienhard Award for the Advancement of Health Care from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, among many other awards.
Byllye has been participating in consciousness-raising groups and abortion access activities since the early 1970s. In response to the lack of access to abortion and other reproductive health needs that low-income Black women faced in her community, Byllye and her colleagues opened the Gainesville Women’s Health Center in 1974. It was the first abortion and gynecological care clinic in the city, opening after a petition to start a Planned Parenthood clinic in Gainesville was denied.
She has advocated alongside prominent African-American leaders such as Shirley Chisholm, Maxine Waters, Dorothy Height, and Faye Wattleton. Together, they issued and signed a public statement, “We Remember: African American Women for Reproductive Freedom” in 1989.
In the intervening decades, Byllye has won numerous awards, published multiple works on public health, served in an advisory role for the Office of Research on Women’s Health of the National Institutes of Health, served as a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and received honorary degrees from six colleges and universities. Let’s get a round of applause for Byllye.
Our second panelist, Cynthia Gutierrez (she/ella) is an award-winning first-generation Nicaraguan Salvadoran reproductive justice organizer, full-spectrum doula, cultural strategist, writer, and public speaker. Her work looks at the intersection of reproductive justice, the criminal justice system, disability justice, and environmental justice.
Cynthia graduated from the 2021 Rockwood Leadership Institute Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice cohort. Cynthia’s work has been featured in the New York Times, The Lily News, Elle Magazine, Parents Latina, The San Francisco Chronicle, Rewire News Group, and other widely read publications.
She is currently the program manager for the University of California San Francisco Hub of Positive Reproductive and Sexual Health (HIVE) and Team Lily programs. Cynthia is a proud abortion storyteller with We Testify. She is on the Board of Directors for ACCESS Reproductive Justice, the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, and Women’s Voices for the Earth.
She has a Bachelor’s in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Cynthia is originally from San Francisco’s Excelsior District and resides with her husband and son in East Oakland. Round of applause for Cynthia.
Last but not least, Rachel Branaman (she/her) is the founder and principal consultant of Talem Consulting, a national, full-service diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), woman-owned firm that provides nonprofits the tools they need to build capacity, fundraise, and dismantle systems of inequity. Her work provides an intersectional and equity-based framework to ensure the communities being served are centered in nonprofits’ work.
Rachel has 20 years of nonprofit experience. She has worked as a Community Development Advisor for the Ministry of Health and Social Services in Namibia for the U.S. Peace Corps. She also served as Executive Director for Alley’s House, an organization providing education and social services to teenaged mothers, and Consultant for health care organizations such as Urban Health Plan in New York, Immunize DC, and Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation, among others. She is currently a vaccine activist on a monthly Radio Azad show and is an advocate on DC’s Capitol Hill, meeting with legislators on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act, Bans off our Bodies movement, Menstrual Equity for All Act, and the Sam Farr and Nick Castle Peace Corps Reform Act.
She is NWHN’s interim director of development and serves as a board member for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and the Association of Philanthropic Council. She has a Bachelor’s in French from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and a Master’s in Nonprofit Management from Regis University.
Resources for Episode 001:
- Learn more about Betty Friedan’s seminal book “The Feminine Mystique” on Goodreads.
- Peruse the Boston Women’s Health Collective’s historical records over at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. HIVE’s mission is to advance reproductive and sexual wellness for individuals, families, and communities affected by HIV in San Francisco and beyond.
- Team Lily is a Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital-based multidisciplinary care team providing person-centered, trauma-informed, wrap-around services to pregnant and postpartum people.
- The Black Women’s Health Imperative is the first and only national non-profit solely dedicated to achieving health equity for Black women in America.
- Founded in 2011, Talem Consulting provides nonprofits with the tools they need to build capacity, fundraise, and dismantle systems of inequity.
- Black Millennials 4 Flint is a national environmental justice and civil rights organization with the purpose of bringing like-minded organizations together to collectively take action and advocate against the crisis of lead exposure, specifically in African-American & Latinx communities throughout the nation.
- We Testify is an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions, increasing the spectrum of abortion storytellers in the public sphere and shifting the way the media understands the context and complexity of accessing abortion care.
Terms Mentioned + Links to Definitions:
The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and entertain. All views expressed by the persons featured on the Your Health Unlocked podcast are their own and do not reflect the opinions of the NWHN or its affiliates. Information provided in this podcast does not constitute medical advice. Consult your own provider for any medical issues that you may be experiencing.
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