 Good evening. My name is Rebecca Brandell and I am the director of the Master of Bioethics program at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Center for Bioethics. It is my honor to be with here with you today to introduce and moderate our final four events in our second annual Black History Month collaboration with our friends and colleagues at the National Center for Bioethics in research and healthcare at Tuskegee University. Before we begin, I have a few preliminary housekeeping items to review with you. This event is being recorded. The event video will be posted on the Center for Bioethics YouTube page. Please submit your questions at any time using the question and answer feature found in the meeting controls at the bottom of your screen. Please do not enter your questions in the chat box or we may miss them. Selected questions will be discussed after the presentations conclude. Continue the conversation with us on Twitter using hashtag HMS Bioethics. Please do feel welcome to use the chat feature to share comments or technical issues. Again, not questions as we may not receive them. If you're interested in joining us for upcoming events, learning news, or sharing in our education programs, please subscribe to our center email at bioethics.hms.harvard.edu. As Black History Month draws to a close, today we will end on a hopeful note by focusing on our youth and how together we can work to advance well-being and healing for future generations. Preparing youth for the future is most effective when efforts and interventions begin in early life. However, Black children are disproportionately affected by socio-political determinants of physical and mental health that have challenged their opportunity and potential for success. We are joined today by three experts, doctors Anne Wimberley, Benjamin Roy, and Jacqueline Brooks, who will share their experience and perspectives on directions forward to promote equity, well-being, and flourishing for today's youth from theological, psychological, and educational perspectives. Please join me in welcoming our esteemed panelists. I will introduce each of them more extensively before their remarks. We will begin our session by welcoming Dr. Anne Wimberley. Dr. Anne, Streetie Wimberley, or Dr. Anne, as she is fondly known, is Professor Emerita of Christian Education, Executive Director Emerita, and currently Senior Advisor of the Youth Hope Builders Academy, a theological program for high school youth, and the Connecting with Hope Innovation Hub Young Adult Ministry Initiative at Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds an undergraduate degree from Ohio State University, a graduate degree from Boston University, a seminary degree from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, a PhD from Georgia State University, and engaged in postdoctoral studies at the School of Theology at Claremont, California. Her more than six decades as an educator began in admission school in New Mexico, followed by public school teaching, higher education, and theologic education roles across the United States and internationally. With her husband, Dr. Edward Wimberley, she has led annual day of healing forums at the Tuskegee Bioethics Center for Descendants of the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study. Dr. Anne's leadership includes serving as president of the Religious Association and the first black president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education. She has numerous published articles, chapters, and books, and is recognized as a noted Christian educator of the 20th century at the Biola University Talbot School of Theology. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Anne Wimberley to present her remarks on the role of spirituality for youth. Dr. Anne. Good evening, and thank you so much for that gracious introduction and this remarkable time of sharing. In my presentation, I want to share briefly some thoughts about the connection of spirituality as a central aspect of healing and wellbeing for future generations. Let me start with a story recently highlighted on national news about the children's book, How High is Heaven? Upon the death of his grandmother, this preschool-age son of Lindsay Davis, the book's author, asked the deeply theological question, Where is Heaven? And when told it is in the sky, he promptly replies that he wants to go there so he can see his grandmother. The book gives a faith response. This story as well as statements and soul-wrenching questions of young people today about police brutality, racial hatred, and tough times draws our attention to the very real way in which spirituality, or that something that is bigger or beyond ourselves, connects with evokes questions about and processes search for answers and brings resolution. So how do we unpack all of this? In what follows, I will focus on four aspects, including awareness, perspectives, direction, and action. Let's be aware that life does not proceed without a spiritual dimension. It is apart from the biological, psychological, and sociological or interpersonal aspects of life, but it has a way of intervening in all of them. At the same time, those aspects of life influence the spiritual dimension. Let's call it a biopsychosocial spiritual connection. The question of Lindsay Davis' son and those of black young people about concrete and deeply felt life experiences reveal a search for answers about things beyond their reach, beyond their comprehension, beyond what they can see, touch, or feel. Really, the search is about somehow tapping into a finding to use Harold Connick's words, a glimmer of light when circumstances say there is none, a future when all of the evidence points to no future, a purpose and direction when everything in this world appears meaningless, and comfort when there is no one around to comfort. In the book, Raising Hope, Forepass to Courageous Living for Black Youth, written by me and Sarah Farmer, we refer to seven dimensions of the multi-dimensional nature of well-being. Let me call our attention briefly to each of it. Physical well-being of young people centers on life, bodily health, and bodily integrity. It reflects their remaining alive to the full length of normal existence and not dying prematurely. They are able to function physically, are sufficiently nourished, have adequate shelter and affordable resources that contribute to these outcomes. Psychological well-being pertains to their personal wholeness of mind shown in acceptance and value of your own and others' identities. It involves inner peace about oneself, a positive and affirming view of self and others. Particularly for black young people, it includes affirmation of ethnic cultural appearance, color, physique, body size, language and cultural artifacts in a society that sets forward a bias that repudies black ethnic norms. Relational well-being refers to young people's participation in peer, family, religious, local and wider social networks that affirm personal value and belonging as human beings. They are treated as persons with dignity and worth. They're equal to others and they exhibit the same toward others. This conduct extends to the receiving and showing respect, non-humiliation and non-discriminatory behavior in relationships and those toward them. Economic and vocational well-being occurs through young people's access to economic, educational and occupational resources needed to sustain life and care for self and others for whom they are responsible materially. It is having the right to seek employment and receive compensation on an equal basis with others and to be treated in the workplace as a human being. Young people experience intellectual and creative well-being through their ability to imagine, think, reason and do things in a truly human way, informed and cultivated by inadequate education. They experience this form of well-being in various styles of self-expression and recreated endeavors that revitalize them, evoke laughter, reaffirm their gifts and open avenues for fulfilling hope in life. Spiritual well-being happens in young people's choices and embrace of personal virtues and self-regulating behaviors that promote and express care of self-concern for others, recognition of God or a higher being and ways of proceeding in life in times of promise and pain. Young people draw on religious traditions and narratives such as prayer, worship, personal conversion, guidance and models of constructive life practices. They become aware of personal and spiritual gifts that point to vocational options and choices and they form and use leadership skills that are transferable in the home, school, community and workplace. They develop coping skills to process, negotiate and resolve life difficulties based on belief in a higher being, faith or religious supports and exemplars of faith. Well, there are research data that particularly connect spirituality to dimensions of life and well-being. We find them in religious practices that connect with and make a positive difference in various dimensions of well-being in these studies. Just let me cite a few in this short time together. The 2015 study of Alfie Embraer-Lenoble and his associates, done with African American youth between the ages of 11 and 17, dealing with depression, cited religion as an incentive for self-care and adjustment against self-harm, and prayer as a means of addressing obstacles as well as prompting youth to take initiative to seek help outside of prayer. At the same time though, prayer could be a barrier if attitudes toward it reflect a rigid orientation. As noted by a youth who said, I think that especially religious black people or Christian black people are usually like, okay, all you have to do is take your troubles to God and he'll deal with it. Or, well, you don't need no drugs because all you got to do is pray. But also a key finding was the necessity of trusted relationships and safe secure environments, increasing the youth's willingness both to confide in faith community leaders and accept encouragement and direction for outside clinical care. Jacqueline Madison, her associates, in their 9th 2019 review of religiosity, spirituality and positive black development in urban areas, highlights a holistic model of well-being that includes family, religious institutions and schools. All of these are important social networks through which values and moral guidance are shared and modeled. Now the 2015 research project, Building Bridges of Hope, The Church's Role in Reaching Black Youth, for which I was principal investigator, specifically sought the voices of 435 black teens aged 13 to 18 about the church's effectiveness in responding to realities of their everyday lives and strategies for positive connections. As part of the survey, youth were asked to identify from a list of current day issues, which ones they think the church should address. More than 50% of the total group assigned the greatest responsibility for addressing five critical issues, spiritual life, grief, death, sadness, suicidal thinking or attempts, crime, violence issues, and community service. They did not identify the church pastors, youth leaders, mentors, or church groups as sources of help, but when asked the question, would you say that the church needs to be part of the lives of today's black youth? 91% said yes. They're not anti-church. They want the church to see them, hear them and respond. They seek an alive village. Hear what they said. Make the youth feel welcome and make them feel like family. Stay focused on the mission that the church was meant for. Try to put your feet in our shoes and try to see exactly where we're coming from. We're going through a lot. We're dying. Today feels like there is no hope considering all the unnecessary police brutality. How are we supposed to keep believing? Just help us. An essential message is that spirituality must be translated into human relational terms or what may be called God with skin on. Connections must be made with every aspect of their lives, but may it be known. Let me say it loud and clear. Let our young people's voices count. When we as adults listen carefully, we become privy to their biographies of the soul that reveal their thoughts, deep emotion, light predicaments and profound insights. Know that the soul stories of young people are essential and powerful means of stirring within us or in fact pressing us as adults to grasp what is deeply important in their journey called life and our role in it. So what direction should we take to respond? A number of efforts evolving from the work of YHBA, the Youth Hope Builders Academy, focus on relevant pathways or programs, opportunities and experiences that help young people sort out what is going on in their lives, provide direction as well as build and draw on their leadership from a faith perspective. Pathways are further understood as creative and nurturing endeavors that engage young people in imagining hopeful ways forward in life. Let me just share several pathways utilized in the Academy. One, retreat camps and church sponsored occasions as settings for connecting spirituality with life using teams of clergy youth leaders, counselors and a wide range of guest presenters. Two, host community or churchwide convocations or forums that bring together the cross-generational family. Three, mentoring. Four, connections with schools as change agents. Five, development of resources. The YHBA has a newsletter called the Hope Messenger that contains program ideas and updates on program implementation. It's distributed on the Academy website. Here it is www.youthhopebuilders.com. It includes a magazine called Turtle Times, which is a family oriented resource with voices stories of children, youth, and engages the whole family in issues from a faith perspective. I cannot say enough that in all that is done we must remember the gift of shared story. Let the statements of youth in the building bridges of hope study ring in your hearts. Here's some more, take time to listen and see what's bothering us they say, listen to our story, talk to us and see where we're coming from to get an understanding of who we are and where we want to be in the future. Two, remember that they are telling us to deal with real life. In their words, talk about real life issues that we face. We want answers about God. Say more about God and prayer. Tell us the truth but make it plain how it fits with our issues. Have Bible study, but talk about the political in the community. Talk about the police. Talk about black on black violence. Three, remember that parental involvement and monitoring are central. As one you said, can somebody help my mom to help me. And in the words of a parent, how about a hope builders program for us for remember, don't leave out the arts and youth leadership. A continuous theme in the words of the youth is the important role of expressivity, but as one you said, use music to reach us include songs we know. And remember, let us lead. If connecting spirituality with the health and well being a future generations is to be effective, then there must be a vital village to make it happen. Churches including church clergy and congregations cannot be silos in their actions. Parents and caregivers can't do it alone. Community agencies and leaders must not be standalone entities. Schools are not singular institutions. Medical professionals are not separate from community. The government cannot and must not be a separate responder police departments must not exist without helpful, responsible and just connections. Surely, one of the key outcomes and learnings of the YHBA endeavors has been that there is the need for collaborative engagement. Moreover, there are those within this village constellation, who are reaching out who want to be partners for the good of future generations in this present era of evil racial division, and for many a sense of hopelessness helplessness and hopelessness. Our tasks know the demand of the day is that we call together village teams to review the issues facing our young people envision the roles and responsibilities of each team member or entity in a collaborative way forward and recognize specific steps to make the bio psycho spiritual connection come alive spirituality is a recognizable and important part of healing and well being in this preparation. I want to highlight the key elements of awareness perspective direction and action for our consideration of spirituality and the multi dimensional nature of well being of young people. I'm grateful for this time together. And thank you for your attention. Thank you, Dr. Wimberley Dr and for your wonderful remarks starting us out I have so many questions and so many so much more on behalf of all of us to learn from you. And we're going to go ahead and welcome our next speaker and we'll have an opportunity at the end to have a conversation about your presentation and the others, and also to engage questions from our participants. Thank you so much. It is now my great pleasure to introduce my colleague Dr. Benjamin Roy. Dr Roy is the immediate past president of the black psychiatrist of America. He received his medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine and completed his internship in internal medicine at Harlem hospital in New York City, followed by a psychiatry residency at St. Vincent's Hospital, also in New York. He subsequently completed a clinical fellowship in neuro pharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health, and in neuro immunology at the National Institute of neurological communicative disorders and stroke of the National Institutes of Health, both in Bethesda, Maryland. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr Roy discovered human antibodies for endorphins and the opiate receptor in patients with psychiatric disorders and holds two US patents on methods of detecting antibodies in human body fluids. He has participated in numerous phase two through four clinical trials in neuro pharmacology and neuro immunology. He is also responsible for exposing the use of data from the US State, the United States Public Health Service syphilis study at Tuskegee to develop syphilis diagnostic tests that were patented and commercialized. He currently practices psychiatry in Columbus, Georgia. Please join me in welcoming Dr Roy to share his remarks on mental health and well being. Dr Roy. Good evening and thank you for having me. My view really has to do with providing a future. The principal thing that makes people depressed is not seeing a future. I was watching a documentary the other day, Little Rock Central 50 years later, celebrating the desegregation of Little Rock High School. It was filmed in 2007 but what struck me about it was that all of the black children at the school which is now integrated were doing poorly while the white students were going on to one colleges. And when they were talking with these students, they were all convinced that there was no reason to work towards doing anything in the future because they had no future. And the way they expressed that they had no future was by quoting all the statistics of all the studies, most people will quote in academic meetings. So there's a paradoxical effect of statistics and these studies and that is that telling children, you know that, you know, one out of this only goes so far and three out of 10 are going to end up in prison yada yada yada yada. And really to provide a future for kids probably one of the most the most important thing to do is to keep them out of mental health system to begin with. Now as much as I believe in psychiatry and and and its use and in mental health treatment by mental health professionals. And a number of people are fed into the system for the wrong reasons. And that heard it on into the justice system. So I mean, the, the mental health system the education system and the justice system, pretty much leaflets of the same page, it just folded over one another. And that begins with our diagnostics, the diagnostics for psychiatry and mental health have to do with the DSM, which is the diagnostic statistical manual of mental health disorders. And one thing about mental health disorders is that they're not well defined. Even in a setting where illness is well defined, for example, right now with COVID-19, you cannot define disease any better than way COVID-19 is defined right now. There's still great resistance to its treatment to its diagnosis and to its public health measures. They're pretty much a similar kind of resistance to mental health, public health. And we have to cut through that and provide a future that these children can see a future not just children but as adults adults as well. But there's so many things working against them. Now, if you go to the House, the Chamber of the House of Representatives, there are 23 doors, and above each door is a body leaf of a legal theorist that was considered to be important to the development of American law. Half of them are people who wrote slave codes for Spain, for France, and for England. And it begins there. And you can, and of course, for us, we see that it's beginning there with voter suppression. These things are all related to one another. And what we have to do is not only consider what kind of future we can provide for children and adults to see. But to see what kind of future others are trying to force upon us before it happens. And to be able to parry that and neutralize it at the time it is one tries to implement it. So there's so much oppression and education, we can see right now there's so much difficulty with lists of books that schools in some states are deciding they do not want studied or read. You know, I mean this is sort of going back to the burning of books in Germany. Where are we going to protect our children and our adults, and our populace, you know, from such kind of censorship that is trying to basically impose not only the ideas of what they should experience. Okay, but what they're not experiencing but but but is provided as a fiction. So my training in the 70s. The, every patient I saw that was black and the same diagnosis, and that was paranoid schizophrenia. They were each on the exact same medication they exact same dose 50 milligrams prolix and intramuscularly every two weeks. We are now facing a similar kind of thing. I've seen children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, who had other reasons for why they could not attend. Mostly migraine children with what are known as partial complex seizures and a number of other disorders. They're not getting no one is getting the medical work that they should get. And then they're being channeled along into the into the justice system from the education system. Okay. Now, and then plus they're being medicated inappropriately with inappropriate doses. So just to give you an example, young, a child, 50 pounds on eight milligrams of risk per doll a day. Now for the psychiatrist and who listening. I know they just fell out of their chairs. The adult dose is a top dose is six milligrams a day yet this child was on eight milligrams and for what, because she misbehaved. At any rate, what we have to begin to do is to independently begin structuring diagnostic systems that challenge those diagnoses that are present today and the principal ones for kids are attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, excuse me, oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorders. These are the things that basically ruin a child's future before they even get started. The other is psychological testing. And I became interested in this with a child in Alabama, a 14 year old boy was attacked in school he defended himself. But when the principal interrupted the fight he sent the white kid home and had him arrested. He then underwent psychological testing and was considered to be a threat to the community based on the scores of the psychological test. He was tested by something known as the Bays and Freeman Longo test of sexual aggression of aggression in dangerousness and sexual offenders. Okay. And this was not meant for children. And it wasn't even normed on adults, yet this kid was sent to prison. Well, first detention and eventually to prison based upon this test and the test was was conducted by a doctor of divinity, who had a license and family and marriage counseling. And the questions that he asked them were not on the test principle one being whether or not he would have sex with white girls. The fact that people have trained and in a license does not mean that they are practicing mental health psychiatry psychology license counseling, the way they're expected to. They pretty much go off on their own and start doing what they think is right in the way they think it should be done. And then they have this weaponized diagnostic system that they can use to plug in diagnoses that seem to fit and get them paid. So how do we liberate our patients and I know no one thinks about psychiatrists as one to liberate patients. But what we do is about patients liberating. We're trying to restore them to their full mental faculty so that they can live a free life. But force, unfortunately, we are up against a great deal that actually sort of corners us and labels us even before we've had to do anything. The one of the principal things is is of course police violence police shootings. And although people tend to think that these are accidents has just happened with in Minnesota. No, there's a training program known as the bulletproof mind conducted by a Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman. And what this does is teach police to kill and not only to kill, but not to feel bad about it at the end of it because post dramatic stress disorder within this system is considered to be something that only a whip would experience. And he's referring to combat veterans, having trained having been an army psychologist. So we're up against, you know, pretty, pretty organized things. And it what's the voter suppression is just a part of it. The mental health now is another arm of a way that can be used to oppress people. And how will that happen. Who will provide that kind of diagnosis, who will provide the medications will it be physicians or will they open up prescribing to people whose whose function is to better serve what essentially axiological needs of of a state or community. So we have to begin now planning for our future. For children's future, especially. They have to be self motivating. They have to want to learn. And that can be done. Number one, we need to protect them from all these statistics because these children in the documentary I was talking about recording their statistics that basically said their lives were over before they even began. You know, you take a child. If you know their name, and you have their address, and you mail them a book in their name. That package has to come to them so if they have brothers and sisters it shouldn't be a lump package with all the names, each child gets their own book to begin with. You'd be surprised how they take off from that, you know, because what we're up against also are video games. Music videos. I mean, you know their kids are little girls want to be carly be more Megan the stallion, not to mention some porn stars. Every little boy wants to be an NFL or the NBA, but has no realistic idea of what it takes and how many people actually succeed. The numbers extremely small, and the numbers are available the NCAA provides the chances of entering NCAA college basketball and football, and from there moving into the NFL they have a website that will provide all that information. And kids need to be exposed to this. So we can begin now. Providing for their futures. The church is extremely important. It's 24 seven. Anyone who's depressed does not have to wait to see someone they will come to you. So I'm very much about referring my patients to their churches their synagogues their mosque, their temples, whatever their religion is and if they're atheist to ethical societies. Okay, providing a network for the future is is the principal thing. So, I guess I'll stop there. Thank you, Dr Roy for sharing your remarks with us. There are questions coming into the Q&A box and I know you've stimulated a lot of thinking and yet more questions so we'll look forward to being able to come back to them into a discussion at the conclusion of our next presentation thank you so much for being with us. We're now going to move on to our final panelist presenter for the evening, Dr Jacqueline Brooks. Dr Brooks is a career educational leader with an extensive background in K-12 education and organizational leadership. She has served as a leader in school district serving from as few as 3000 students to more than 70,000 students. She has been a principal, a curriculum specialist, prevention and support coordinator, accountability coordinator, federal programs director and school superintendent. She most recently served in the role of superintendent of education for making County Alabama schools for more than a decade and retired in January of this year. Currently she is owner and principal of your empowerment services. That's yes, where community improvement is her focus. She also works part time as the executive coaching coordinator for school superintendents of Alabama. Dr Brooks has served as an adjunct professor for Tuskegee University, the University of Phoenix and Argosy University and has taught and lectured widely for national professional organizations and public agencies. She is a recipient of numerous honors for her outstanding service. She is authored and contributed to multiple educational grant funded initiatives, including a multimillion dollar Alabama gear up grant to reduce dropouts in black belt counties. A multimillion dollar Apple connected grant for making County students and staff. And most recently a federal aviation administration grant to start a training program in making County. She is co author of two writing guides for departments of education and has previously served as the Florida teachers of the English region for director. Please join me in welcoming Dr Brooks to present her thoughts on education, racism, healthcare and bioethics. Dr Brooks. Good evening and thank you so very much. At this time I will share my screen. And bring up the presentation that I will use to guide my conversation with each of you. Tonight, as we take a look at our focus for tonight, racism. Healthcare and bioethics, well being and healing for future generations. I am looking at this through the lens of education. We know that recently one of the things that has been the most difficult for us, of course, has been the pandemic. COVID-19 has interrupted schooling and impacted families beyond belief. Schooling education provides essential learning mental supports and some basic needs. So when schools close or significantly impacted children and youth are deprived of opportunities for growth and development, cognitively and effectively. These disadvantages are disproportionate for disabled and underprivileged learners. Black children who tend to have fewer opportunities beyond school. If I had to use one word on the word wall regarding where we currently are with the status of situations in education, it would be the word exacerbate. Every condition, every yield, every need, every deficit that we are seeing over the years in public education has now been exacerbated by COVID-19. The need for educational supports, academic and effective have never been greater. The academic underscore the need to focus on the whole child and the family. And we know academics are important. We know that the subjects of math English science are really why we send our children to school each day. But children, particularly minority children, children with disabilities underrepresented children have a plethora of needs when they come to school. Not just academic ones, and many times families are just as needy. We also know from our studies and research and psychological premises that academic needs sometimes cannot be addressed until foundational needs of children or even their families or short up. This research is not new. It's not a new premise. However, it has never been more important than it is now as we look to heal our current and future generations. Abraham Maslow was a researcher and a psychologist, and he highlighted the foundational needs that must be met in order for students and people to have success in their lives. A very pragmatic concept and scientific concept. Many may be familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it basically says what we all know. If we do not have our physiological needs of breathing and food and water and mating and sleep and excretion met, then we can't move to cognitive needs or academic needs. The same is true for safety and security, employment, morality, spirituality, health and property, love and belonging. All of these are needs that must be met. And so when children are in an educational setting, when they're in a school setting, we must be more aware than ever that this particular hierarchy of needs is in existence. We also have to consider the premise of equity when we think about education in schools. Of course with civil rights and other great movements, we have focused quite a bit on equality, giving everyone the same thing. But what we now know is that when we give everyone the same thing, the deficits are still there. As you can see in the equality slide here and graphic, there are three people represented. And each of the people is a different statue or height. But all three are given the same box and that box is designed to make them equal in resources. But is it equitable in resources? Equity in theory gives the taller man nothing. It gives the second tallest person one box, and it gives the shortest person two boxes, meaning that resources are placed where they are needed. Not too many times in traditional settings, what happens for equity is that enough of the legs or enough of the resources are pulled away until there is a reality of equity, but not equity at all. Because each of them is in need of resources. And as you can see is bleeding from not having them. So what do we do in education? How do we heal? Where do we go from here? We take a look at the holistic classroom, being able to provide those foundational needs that Maslow talked about, being able to put those resources for equity in place. So holistic classrooms versus the traditional classrooms. Holistic classrooms are grounded in the work of Maria Montessori. Hence the Montessori Academy or concept. The Learning Policy Institute maintains that holistic education classroom programs engage the student at all levels, social, emotional and academic, hence providing equity and providing those foundational needs that are necessary. This is where learning happens, the Institute says in a 2018 article, educating the whole child. What are components of a holistic classroom? Well, things that go into a holistic classroom versus a traditional classroom include ergonomics, the sheer design of a school, so that it meets the needs of its students and families. This happens at the construction phase or the retrofitting phase, so that the layout is conducive to success, not just academic success, but also social and emotional success. Design, lighting, seating, lesson plans with real work and world connections, and exploratory discovery and learning. These are the things that make a holistic classroom different from a subject focused or academically focused classroom, where the subject matter is of the only concern. A holistic classroom might have this look at it. A different type of furniture from what we normally think about. Comfortable seating. A sunlight able to come in, curtains and warm paint, rich with print, literature, and other resources. We also must consider if we're going to meet the foundational needs, the physiological needs, the safety needs, the belonging needs, and the equity for each and every student and family, community schools model. What are community schools versus traditional schools? Community schools embody how education should function in a healthy democracy. They're public schools that provide the services that are truly needed by students and their family. And each community school is unique to that neighborhood's needs, and is run by the people who know our children best. Families, educators, community organizations, local governments and students themselves all working together. What are components of community schools? Well, there is a mental health component where there are mental health specialists who are able to work directly with educators, families and parents to be able to meet the needs of that child. In other words, the whole child's needs are being met. Social workers are on site. Staff, meaning teachers, counselors, administrators have the professional development necessary to implement trauma-informed school practices. Full service clinics or hospitals, local physicians or pediatricians are on site. School nurses are readily available. From the effective domain, the schools are staffed with caring teachers and personnel. The school serves as a community learning center where there is childcare for families and their extended day hours, so that nearly 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the needs and support for students and families exist. The curriculum is not just an academic curriculum, but it's a life skills curriculum that teaches about checking entrepreneurship, goal setting, and those kinds of things that will help students have a bright future. There is less of a focus on high stakes testing, and rather than worrying about an ABC or D on a report card, there's a use of mastery reports. Children still go to play by having recess and there's advisory time where students work on what their future pathways will be and what their goals are. And they interact with each other through peer counseling and programs. Nutrition and hygiene are at the forefront with breakfast in the classroom, fresh fruit programs, nutritional lunches, and after school meals, weekend meals and support family deliveries if necessary. Children are taught how to be resilient and how to bounce back from adversity and families can deal with financial goals and situations right on site. This is a graphic of a community school model where the school is the hub of the community. And the needs of families and students are met so that students can focus on learning and educators can focus on teaching and families can have more solidarity and success. Schools should be hubs. Traditional schools are asked requested demanded and mostly legislated to do more for students. If this is the case, the design and focus of classrooms and schools must shift to be inclusive of those constructs and services necessary to do so. Thus a movement toward holistic classrooms using the community schools model is both fitting and necessary. The feet is not easy, because their considerations such as space, time, human resources, articulation between agencies and more. But it is a must, and it is doable. And there are examples of successful schools using these models across the country and internationally. Equity is achievable with the proper models. We can make sure that equity is not in theory, but it is realized. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is quite an old concept, but it is still very relevant. And with the proper models of holistic classrooms and community schools models. The needs of our students and families can be met. We can make sure that our families have food and those physiological things that make them successful. We can make sure that they're in a safe environment, and we can promote the effective domain and help them goal set and move toward higher self esteem. In summary, the pandemic that school students and families are facing because it is not over. We're in the third school term of this situation. It has exacerbated academic issues, social issues, mental health needs and more. To move our schools, our students and families to a place of recovering and healing so that our current and future generations can have the success that is desired. The compositions of school must move toward models that deal with the whole child and the needs of the family. The models worthy of consideration time and implementation are the holistic classroom and the community schools model. And while these models are evidence base simple common sense and pragmatism should have all of us as policymakers and educators moving in this direction. I am Jacqueline Brooks, and I thank you for your time this afternoon. Thank you so much Dr Brooks for leading us through that critical presentation and finishing out the panel with the educational perspective for us today. We really now have so much rich material from the three perspectives we've shared today and I'd like to invite all the panelists back onto the screen so we can have discussion conversation and answer questions that we have, both from and for each other as well as for the attendees at the webinar today. So let me, maybe I will start us out with the first question and draw on a theme that all of you have raised in different ways. The idea that in order to get to our youth first we have to get to the adults. So in different ways, Dr and telling us that that the adults need to listen and need to be there and to reach out and engage youth. And Dr Brooks is telling us about the ways in which we need to think about the systems we put into place, and how we take medicalization seriously, and in the context of our history, and then Dr Brooks really driving that point home with Maslow's hierarchy, and showing that we have a lot of work to do for our youth to get to self actualization. But if we look at the base of Maslow's hierarchy all the way up to self actualization, all those steps require adults to be present and to support the developmental needs of our youth. So I'll, maybe we'll go backwards and we could start with Dr Brooks since I just put her on the spot with her slide. But but what if there's one piece of advice or one really important thing we need to do to get to kids and that's adults through the adults. What's the most important thing for all of us to take away from this and how we can support our youth and future generations. I would say the most important thing is the willingness to change and implement change so that we can move forward with meeting the needs of our kids and families. Sometimes we get married to a construct or a concept of how things should be and think about the only way they should be. And so one of the lessons that I have learned from being a part of the pandemic and dealing with the needs of our students and families as I said they were extremely at exacerbated even in my own home. During this during this time and being willing to change having flexibility and adaptability are the things that we as adults must understand. We have never had anything to bring education to a standstill of this magnitude that I'm aware of in my lifetime or even my grandmother's lifetime. And so on a cusp one March 16 of 2020, we had to make an extraordinary shift. And so if we were able to make an extraordinary shift with a short term notice of that liking. Then I know that we are more prime to be flexible, adaptable and able to change into implement models that are going to help us move more towards success and students being able to climb through that hierarchy of needs to reach self actualization but actually to have their needs met and their families needs met. Great that's so helpful as we start thinking through this and you know I'll go to Dr Roy on the same question next what do we do about the adults who, in all the ways you've cited have really gotten in the way of giving our youth a safe environment and the hope that that they need to move forward to a flourishing future. With families that I see and I see indigent patients as well as Medicaid. And pretty much grew up in the same kind of saying the parents are really most important factor in kids education. We were blessed to have parents that sort to it that we did study but they also took time to teach us. That we see now are either dropped out of school or didn't continue their education after high school and now they're finding that they're in a what basically a knowledge based global economy. And the value of person has to do with the knowledge base. It's not sufficient. In addition to teaching the children we have to teach the parents, although it may not be intended the school system is emphasizing education and to the kids. Once they get to a point where they realize they know more than their parents do. They no longer have any respect for their parents and they pretty much feel as though they should be running the show. And you know what we do is we emphasize teaching the parents as well as the kids either at the same rate or in advance if possible so that when the kid gets to a certain point the parents already there. And, and important very important things on a brain nutrition. Kids that we see that have been diagnosed with ADHD, we do our best to treat them without cycle stimulus. And we will use cycle stimulants if other measures fail. I don't know what your, what the viewing audience demographic is but I'm 72 and I'm a veteran of cloudfish oil. And I don't know how many people that you can tell people to cut fish oil because they start to have flashbacks and they hide under the chairs and there's a combat veterans. Okay. And they're available as gel caps, not not the liquid and spoons the way we used to have to deal with, but the growing brain needs omega threes as well as vitamin a and vitamin D. And guess what was in cod, cod, cod fish oil. Omega threes vitamin a and vitamin D. And that's the stuff I actually did a lot to protect us from being treated as attention deficit kids probably. You will find, or at least we found that as many kids respond to omega threes as due to, you know, methylphenidate, which is riddling or amphetamines, and the difficulty with some cycle is meaning things like riddling and Adderall and focus factor and all this other stuff is that they are amphetamines. For some reason, the mental health field seems to be convinced that kids who take amphetamines, don't turn into little amphetamine addicts, and I don't know where they got that opinion from. But usually, with after a certain amount of time these kids become irritable argumentative if they don't get their, their Adderall and now they get diagnosed as a conduct disorder opposition defined disorder. And that's something we actually created, but we put the onus on the child that that's the way they are. And that's not the case. And some educational systems actually force parents to consent to taking these medications because if they don't, then they get child they get charged with child neglect. And that's a mental medical neglect, which is very wrong thing as far as I'm concerned. So we, we can get kids to through brain nutrition, eliminating certain stimulants like glutamate and aspartate in processed foods out of their diet, and not just the most people are thinking about food offerings. And we'll actually work as neurotransmitters and you know will will pump a kid up. So, brain nutrition, and educating parents, as well as community, and really focusing on youth services in churches. Excellent youth services others are horrible. But, you know, if you can get churches to cooperate with one another. And that's another problem and that is that you know you have theologians who have churches I mean these are actually trained theologians and then you have persons who woke up and got the calling one morning and they open a church. And there's a lot of prejudice there against those who actually studied at seminaries. And so there's sort of sometimes a divide there. But those things go a long way to providing a foundation for kids. And just move on that's a great segue to Dr. Wimberley to tell us about how through her work and from the religious and theologic perspective we can what how we can support the adults how we can build and energize and nourish the village to support our youth. Thank you. One of the sure ways of repelling young people from church reasons why they stopped coming and will not return is the critical approach of adults. And adults really do need to step up to the plate and remember what it was like when they were young. They need to be open and flexible and willing to learn and affirmative young people need to be affirmed. I keep telling the story when I grew up. We heard every Sunday you are somebody. You are a child of God. You are important. You are beautiful or handsome. You're going to be somebody. We heard those words over and over. We heard those words more and more and more today. Now, action. One of my doctoral students decided that the music while he had observed that the music was one of the wars that took place in church because youth wouldn't come because he said we're not going to sing those old songs, we're going to sing those old hymns. So he developed a series of family night gatherings. And in those family night gatherings cross generational. He said, everybody's each person's got to choose a favorite song. And you're going to have to not only have the group sing the song, but you're going to have to tell why it's important to you. And when they did that from the hymns to the spirituals to the lighting of the hymn to the rap to the gospel music. When everybody started telling why it was important for them, why they liked it, why why they sang it. Everybody was talking about the same thing. Big discovery. It was important because it built them up. It gave them direction. It inspired them to help them to hold on. So, if that's the case, then everybody's got to be open for everyone else's music. And out of that came the congregation's desire to make sure that some music from each generation was going to be played and entered into worship service every single Sunday. And they have at least three different genres. So there are ways to go about affirming young people being open and flexible and affirming and willing to learn. The other thing I think is that in the Youth Hope Builders Academy. We stress the importance of families really carving out times to eat together. And churches with family night dinners can do that. But so often families don't have a meal together at all. Or if they're in the home, each one is in their little electronic cottage room, and they're separate. So eating together and developing family rituals, where they can do things together. And sometimes by the way is that little magazine that appears on our website is a way to bring families together focused on trauma issues. Then finally, parents kept yelling to us. Why isn't there a hope builders unit for us and you hope builders program for us, because we really don't know how to do it. They've been combarded with so much in their daily lives that they themselves are floundering, and they want direction. So we developed in one of those summers with young people, a peer mentoring focus with parents, where parents met with a clinical psychologist and counselor to guide them, where they vented what they were going through, and we're led through now, what advice would you give to your peer, what did you do, what did anybody do that was helpful for you, and they developed the whole series of substantive actions that they took that was helpful they were learning from one another so those are just some of the ideas that I would like to share. Those are really wonderful suggestions from all of you that both give us promise for the future and also show us that our work is really cut out for us, both that we can learn from our success and we certainly can't stop here. We have a question in the question and answer box from Dr Rubin Warren, who earns all of our gratitude for bringing us here together this evening in his role as the director of the National Center for bioethics in research and healthcare at Tuskegee University. And what Dr Warren is asking us to address is, how can these three areas, education, health and theology work together for black youth. How do we come together to merge the many ideas and perspectives towards hope for the future. We'll start, I guess this time. Dr Wimberley Dr and why don't we start with you. I'm just really big on collaboration. And I think when when we call together under one roof in one room, people from different segments of society different leadership posts from society, then we can begin to talk together and say from each perspective. What's going on as we see it, what needs to happen from our perspective, and to ask the questions of one another. What can you give to my discipline, what can you offer for each one of us who were sitting here in the room. Now, I need to say to you, another example. Right now we're dealing with violence. We started what is called the inside hope, not violence initiative in a public school and now we have at least two other public schools that are asking for this initiative. What it does is to draw psychologists, professionals, police school teachers, counselors together to meet with the teachers and meet with the students in the schools to talk about this whole thing of violence. We need leadership, what we need to do to accept ourselves as vulnerable, but also ourselves as potential leaders to make it go away. What do police need to do what do psychologists need to do what do medical person need to do, and they share this with students honestly and they tell their own personal stories, but then those groups meet together. We can talk about now how do we move forward together with this. And in that one particular school, which was the first one up and running. They have a whole group of young people who are ambassadors, and the ambassadors now meet with each one of those persons from the different disciplines to talk about what their role is. So the collaboration I think is absolutely essential and it does happen, and it can happen, and we need to make it happen. Yeah, and Dr Roy, how do we use that collaboration to help youth get black youth in particular get beyond the statistics right get beyond the fact that the adults in the system have set things up in a way to, as you say pathologize behavior rather than to look at the causes and the environments that are leading youth to struggle. How do we come together and bring theology education psychology and health to our youth for the future. Well, I mean, people have to sit down and basically commiserate and negotiate. My, my concern and and push is really for, you know, thinking and beginning at an early age. You know, for science and technology of course going to need critical thinking. But that can actually begin at a very young age there's Institute for the advancement of philosophy for children. They began years ago with one book called Harry Stahlmeyer's discovery which was a way of introducing children to thinking. And of course people think about philosophy and I think that's something that should, you know, shouldn't happen until college. But in fact, you know, they now have training programs for kids beginning with three four five years old. You know, and that is how to be able to think properly, which may not sound like it's going to be important but really it helps them to recognize, you know, the nonsense from the things that are really, really critical. And I think you can you can see that right now there's really a dearth of awful thinking among American adults when it comes to the January 6 and everything else that follows. All right, so we need to teach our children how to think. And, and that has to be done in cooperation. Years ago in 1930 there was a study in crisis magazine which is magazine of the NAACP. And they at 1930 looked at 1800 black boys in the south. 90% of them, the fathers were day laborers and the questions were what do you want to do when you grow up and this was done by the general Southern General Education Board. And what they were hoping to hear was that the kids wanted to be day laborers like their father. But in fact 90% of kids that didn't want to go to college. Now you and I are just like wow that's really great stuff. Well they were horrified because as far as they were concerned. The system was failing them if they thought that they could go to college and actually deal with college when in fact they were black kids and everybody knows they weren't capable. And not only that even if they did it would be no jobs for them. So they instituted a new discipline known as guidance counseling, which hadn't existed before. It would be the experience of many people my age especially that when they saw their guidance counselors they would stare it away from their dreams. So you know I want to be a doctor well no you should probably become a plumber. You know I want to be, you know, an aviator. People was stared away from the things that they wanted to do. They stare them to the things that they want to do. Many of us have accomplished our things in spite of the system. And they need to accomplish that things because of the system not in spite of it. And there's so much that they can enrich their lives if if we're there pointing them in the directions they want to go. I believe that the church is an important place for that to happen. Okay. I mean I'm not a church going myself but that has nothing to do with it but has to do with what works. And when it comes to substance abuse for example, and nothing works better than people who have joined churches. I mean bonafide church was synagogue or temples or mosques. And it's not up and down, you know, two or three years of sobriety and then back again off the wagon. So, and I think the churches have to realize that there's a lot they can do depending upon how they set things up. Kids have a natural scientific reasoning. So scientific reasoning is a refutation the ability to refute a hypothesis the hypothesis has to be capable of being falsified. And if you can't falsify it then you have the sense that, you know, you can believe what it says. Well, we deal with there for a second I just want to make there's so much in there are both about the developing the minds the hearts the souls of our youth. I want to let Dr Brooks jump in for a minute and it maybe I'll frame the same question about bringing together health and spirituality religion and education, but ask it just a little bit differently since you got us all thinking about what an innovative school would look like and what a school that really met the needs of youth would look like. How do we bring together mind heart body soul into your dream school. What what would the most empowering and hopeful school for our youth look like in your perspective Dr Brooks. Well, everything that has been mentioned would definitely be a part of our schooling concept. When we talk about the community schools model, it is a Trinity if you will, of home school and community and community could easily be replaced with church because when I was growing up of course that's what it was. It was home school and church, and it served as a pyramid with a foundational layout of a geometric geometric figure and when you stand that that triangle up it has a solid base. And so whatever school. A community needs or a neighborhood needs is what we should be designing and implementing in that neighborhood and in that community, because communities are different neighborhoods are different. Our families and students may have some similarities but they will also have some differences. And so within that school or as close to that school as possible in terms of proximity. We should have all of the services that our students and our families need so that all of their needs are met. So when we talk about community policing that we have well trained resource officers that are working with our schools, when we talk about our churches and religions we have ministers councils and groups and faith based organizations that are working hand in hand with our schools and I know I blur the lines a little bit because I realize they are separation of church and religion. But when we're looking at outcomes for our children, we have to do what is pragmatic what makes sense what is realistic and what is going to help our children be successful, and we can't worry so much about all of the business rules. We also have to look when it comes to our social services support, our mental health support, our medical support, those services being readily available for parents, I think both of the previous speakers spoke a little bit to the stressors of life and just the business of life that is on the backs and shoulders of our parents as a working parent, I experience it myself with a 15 year old and an eight year old. So if we can help parents navigate some of these avenues of stress in their life and replace them with resources, then we can have successful schools and communities and they go hand in hand. There must be synergy, there must be communications, there must be conversations and so we cannot continue to be siloed as we go about our work. We must create a synergistic perspective where schools are hubs in the community. And we bring those resources and those agencies and those organizations under the rooftop of a school and create community schools that serve students and their families and be willing to readjust when we see the needs are not being met. If we're on the wrong street, get off of it and get on the right street and use all of those community resources available to help us do it so that we engage in goal setting with a family in the child. Yes, this is what I want to be this is what I want to do and here we are going to do everything possible to help you there because you can be your best self. May I add something there. Of course, yes. I really know that developing a collaborative network is not hard. We reached out and called a doctor at CDC. When we talked to the police department. When we talked to clergy. When we talked to teachers and said, we're having a panel, would you join us. We don't have a lot to offer you and they stopped us before we even finished that sentence. We're not looking for an honorarium. We're waiting to respond. We're willing to step up to the plate, and they do step up and almost saying, I thought nobody never asked. See, so it just takes somebody to take the lead and reach out and say, help us. And they will come, and it doesn't take a lot of money to do it. That's such great advice about thinking broadly, where we can find hope where we can find resources and how we can break down. Not so hard to break down silos and barriers to really work together and think about, think about how to promote our youth and how to make a brighter future. I can't believe it, but our time together this evening, we're just getting started and our time is coming to an end together. And I just wanted to take a quick minute to thank all of you for helping us to close out our Black History Month collaboration with Tuskegee University. Really to help us end on a hopeful note that yes, we have many challenges together. Yes, the adults and the adults before us have created systems that don't always support our youth and support hope. And yet there are so many different ways by thinking about all the aspects of our communities, of our resources, of ourselves, of our heads, our hearts, our minds, our souls, that we can really come together to support youth towards a future of health and well-being and flourishing. And with that, I want to thank you all. It's been an absolute privilege to get to know each of you just a little bit in the process of planning this panel. And I very much look forward to our continued conversation about paving the way for a bright future for the future generations. Dr. Wimberley, Dr. Roy, Dr. Brooks, thank you so much. And we'll look forward to seeing you next February, if not before.