Vinita Srivastava: From
The Conversation, this is Don’t Call Me Resilient. I’m Vinita Srivastava.
Roberta Timothy: Colonization is a key feature to the development and myth of Canada and it continues to create policies and practices that have treated Black and Indigenous folks and other racialized, or what I say, purposefully marginalized folks, unequal or not fairly.
VS: I started my conversations with today’s guest, Roberta Timothy, about a year ago at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Roberta is a health and human rights researcher, but her work is not just theoretical. As a therapist and activist, she’s intimately connected to her community. She says there are many reasons for health disparities. Some of these are historical, some are social. These are called the social determinants of health. Roberta was definitely not alone at the start of the pandemic when she highlighted the fatal consequences of not dealing with these factors earlier. In this episode, she reflects back on the year and explains why racial justice is a public health issue. Roberta also talks about her new international health project, Black Health Matters. She’s a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.