The connection between health and race was explored during a dialogue held on the AIC campus on March 6. The Faculty Cultural Affairs Committee hosted award-winning local media professional, speaker, activist, and performer Alysia Cutting for her interactive talk, “Your Health, What’s Race Got to Do with It? Discussing how race and ethnicity affect equity and health outcomes.”

Cutting engaged an audience of about 50 AIC staff, professors, and students in the health professions in a discussion about health equity, telling them race is an identifier that impacts health care. “Health equity is where everyone has a fair opportunity to achieve health,” she said. Cutting added, “To achieve health equity, we must change the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustices that give rise to racial and ethnic health disparities.”

Known throughout New England for her voice on WEIB 106.3 Smooth FM radio, Cutting is active as a speaker and panelist, primarily centered around media, the arts, education, faith, and personal empowerment.

The Springfield native is committed to health awareness, access, and advocacy for Black and marginalized rural communities in southern Georgia as rural health equity director for the non-profit SOWEGA Rising. Cutting told her AIC audience that in Georgia, many smaller rural hospitals are closing, which creates a barrier to health. She sees her work as trying to eliminate those preventable health barriers and calls on those in attendance to do the same.