EDWIN LINDO, JD, ASSISTANT DEAN FOR SOCIAL AND HEALTH JUSTICE +ASSOCIATE TEACHING PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Pathologizing Racism: Interrogating the Past to Achieve a Future of Health Justice

Associate Teaching Professor, Edwin Lindo, has embarked on the journey to ask and explore the hard questions of Race & Racism within the institutions of Medicine and Law, and how they inform society more broadly. Edwin brings the interdisciplinary study of Critical Race Theory, Lat Crit, and community organizing to Medicine and Law so we can better learn how Racism detrimentally affects our health, our learning, our teaching, and justice. As faculty in the Department of Family Medicine and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, Edwin has developed curriculum and teaches Critical Race Theory and Medicine; and provides student and faculty development around the issues of race and equity in medical education, patient care, and research.

Professor Lindo is also the Assistant Dean for Social and Health Justice within the Office of Healthcare Equity at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His research and scholarship has focused on the history of racialized medicine, race & racism within medicine, social justice, social movements, and decolonized pedagogies for critical education. Edwin is also the creator and host of The Praxis Podcast – a podcast focused on addressing racism within medicine in all its forms. Lastly, he is an internationally recognized speaker and thinker on these critical issues.

Estell (his partner and wife) and Edwin founded and curated Estelita’s Library, a Social Justice Community Library & Bookstore dedicated to the goal of bringing truth and justice to communities through decentralized knowledge and decolonized spaces. Their books cover topics of justice, liberation, identity, race & racism, economic and political theory, and anything else that guides us in understanding our world through a critical lens. You can find them at EstelitasLibrary.com. Estelita’s Library is named after their 3 year old, Estella.

Edwin is also the co-founder of North Star Cycling, the largest BIPOC cycling club on the West Coast — their goal is to bring melanated people and justice to cycling.

MONICA VELA, MD, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND DIRECTOR OF THE HISPANIC CENTER OF EXCELLENCE, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

Which Way is Up: Addressing Health Equity

Dr. Monica Vela joined the University of Illinois College of Medicine as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Hispanic Center of Excellence in 2021. She serves as an Associate Editor for JAMA Network Open. She is member of the AAMC Committee for Holistic Review and serves the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education as an Equity Matters Program facilitator. She served as the Associate Vice Chair for Diversity and Associate Dean at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine where she directed a required first year medical student course providing a structural competency foundation in health equity and advocacy.

She became a HRSA funded investigator in 2023. She has published over 50 peer reviewed articles and a chapters related to physician workforce diversity, health disparities, and medical education in such journals as JAMA, Lancet, New England Journal and Academic Medicine. Her work has been cited in the Supreme Court writ Fisher vs University of Texas at Austin.

Major awards include the 2012 National Award for Diversity and Access to Care, American College of Physicians, 2014 National Nickens Award for Diversity and Minority Health, SGIM, 2014 AOA National Fellow in Leadership Award (Inaugural), 2014 Distinguished Faculty Award for Community Service and Advocacy, University of Chicago, 2017 University of Chicago’s Biological Science Division Distinguished Senior Faculty Award: Diversity and Inclusion, 2019 UChicago Campus Wide Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Leadership Award, 2019 Phil De Chavez LMSA National Mentor of the Year Award, and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine Favorite Faculty Teaching Award selected by 12 distinct graduating classes at the University of Chicago in 13 years.