July 2022 – Elle Lett, PhD, MA, MBiostat – “We Are More than Our Pain”: Envisioning Joy, Strength, and Power in Intersectionality

July Salon - Elle Lett
July 13, 2022

Salon Topic:
“We Are More than Our Pain”: Envisioning Joy, Strength, and Power in Intersectionality

Salon Guests:
Elle Lett, PhD, MA, MBiostat
Postdoctoral Fellow, Boston Children’s Hospital Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP)

Salon Description:
Intersectionality has increasingly become a core analytical tool for theorizing how social-structural systems drive health inequities. However, in this salon we discuss the degree to which strength-based perspectives are underutilized in operationalizing intersectionality. Can the theoretical framework reach its full potential strictly from deficits-based thinking? How do we envision the unique strengths that arise from existing at specific intersections of oppression and power? What does research that accommodates strengths that arise from marginalization look like?

Guest Bio:
Elle Lett, PhD, MA, MBiostat is a Black, transgender woman, statistician-epidemiologist and physician-in training. Through her work, she applies the theories and principles of Black Feminism to understanding the health impacts of systemic racism, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination on oppressed groups in the United States. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania, master’s degrees in Statistics and Biostatistics from The Wharton School and Duke University, respectively, and a bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard College. To date, her work has focused on intersectional approaches to transgender health and the health impacts of state-sanctioned violence and other forms of systemic racism. Now, she is turning her focus to algorithmic fairness in clinical prediction models and mitigating systems of inequity in health services provision. She is engaging in this new arm of research through a postdoctoral fellowship at the Boston Children’s Hospital Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP), before returning to finish her clinical training.