Decolonizing Our Healing Work Through a Focus on Strengths

Proposal: A deficits model stemming from colonization is the cornerstone for public health education, practice and scholarship, focusing on diseases, deficits, addictions, social risk factors, etc. While important, this view of our communities presents only part of the picture, and at the risk of further disempowering and stigmatizing populations facing the worst health inequities (e.g minoritized groups). A strength-based approach instead focuses on what people and communities do well – resources, skills, strengths, resilience, etc. – with intention of building upon these to improve health. Community asset mapping (CAM) is a framework and skillset necessary for moving toward decolonizing ourselves and our healing work. It is critical for moving us toward health equity.
In this workshop we will present a combination of theory, recipes and real-life examples to support strength-based approaches to health, using adult learning theory to guide our interactive session. We will take this “inspiration” and turn it into “perspiration” in the last half of the session, where the focus becomes participants developing concrete plans for decolonizing their own thinking and translating that into their healing work.