Photo: Nita Mosby Tyler PhD addresses participants at the Healthy Grand Summit     Photo by Diane Ehlert

 

On November 1, over 100 health care professionals, business leaders and interested residents attended the Healthy Grand County Summit at the Inn at Silver Creek in Granby. The Summit was hosted by the Grand County Rural Health Network (GCRHN) and put on by the Grand County Health and Human Resources Coalition (HHRC), a group of nonprofits and government agencies working in human services that have come together to create long-term, collaborative solutions for our community’s problems.

Keynote Speaker, Nita Mosby Tyler, PhD, presented ‘Deconstructing Bias: What we do next matters’. Mosby Tyler is the founder & chief catalyst of The Equity Project, LLC – an organization designed to support organizations and communities in building diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.

Dr. Mosby Tyler led attendees through an interactive workshop with lively discussion on diversity, inclusion, equity, equality and implicit bias. During the seminar, she shared life experiences which helped illustrate how far we, as a society, have come, and, how far we still have yet to go. We learned the difference between diversity and inclusion, “the power of the pause”, and the impact unconscious biases (stereotypes) have on our understanding, actions and decisions. Mosby Tyler showed us ways to retrain the unconscious mind, encouraged us to create a culture of calling out unconscious bias and hold each other accountable. We walked through the Maslow Scale and the bases of Social Power, discovering new ways to approach others and understand ourselves a little better. We were also introduced to “spaces filled with grace”.

At the end of the program, she gave us a list of “recommended reading experiences” and also some homework, with a link to an ‘Implicit Bias Assessment’ conducted by Harvard University.

Grand County Rural Health Network Executive Director, Jen Fanning, told the Winter Park Times, “The Healthy Grand County Summit was funded by The Colorado Trust. It was a special funding initiative to have regional meetings throughout the state focused on health equity.”

“This was the first seminar of its type in Grand County. It costs a lot to put on something like this, so I’m unsure we’ll be able to replicate it”, said Fanning. “However, through our grant with The Trust, we will be offering additional training opportunities in the first and second quarters of next year, focused on leading conversations about equity and belonging in the community, as well as having crucial conversations on topics such as race that are inviting – not contentious.”

The Winter Park Times’ recorded a live video of the event on Facebook, in two parts. Visit our page to view the Summit. To learn more about The Colorado Trust, visit: coloradotrust.org/strategy/health-equity-advocacy