TESTS & TREATMENT

Community Partner: REDE4Black Lives

The Testing and Treatment Team partnered with REDE4 Black Lives and the Black Public Health Collective. The mission of REDE4 Black Lives is to protect and recognize the intrinsic importance of data to Black well-being generally, and within the Canadian provinces and territories specifically. They do this through creating webinars and toolkits that educate Black people about their rights, and inform scholars and researchers of their responsibilities. The mission of the Black Public Health Collective is to "create a higher quality of life for Black peoples through resistance in public health" in Canada. They do this through writing statements and raising critical consciousness surrounding public health education and institutions. Together, we created an inclusive testing toolkit with the goal of informing people of African descent and all Black people about Covid-19 testing. The Toolkit provides some important information about the long- and short-term risks and benefits of sharing information with apps, and public and private providers/service brokers. Together we drafted a mind-map (in conversation with communities) of the path(s) your personal health information data travels along once you take a Covid-19 test, which will be finalized in the fall. And finally, we transcribed the entirety of their 9-part Covid Conversations Youtube webinar series and summarized it in an easily accessible format to highlight the expert opinions to back up the claims in the toolkit. We integrated all of the sources we used in our research into a bibliography to give back to our partner organizations.