Recognizing and Challenging Stigma

Stigma is an intense human experience. Stigma causes suffering and worsens health. This training focuses on recognizing and challenging stigma.  In the first section, we explain what stigma is, how it feels, and how to recognize it.  In the second section, we explore the ways stigma is entangled in the practices and assumptions of healthcare professionals, often unwittingly. In our final section, we identify ways that health professionals can help recognize and reduce stigma to improve patient outcomes and improve population health.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify different forms of stigma and explain why they emerge and persist.

  • Explore the personal experience of stigma and evaluate your own stigmatizing attitudes. 

  • Recognize the signs and impacts of stigma in health care and public settings.

  • Identify solutions to reducing stigma.

Target Audience: Public Health Professionals

Duration: 1.5 hours

Continuing Education Information: 1.5 Category 1 Credits for CHES, 1.5 Continuing Competency Credits 

CHES Provider number:  99036

Disclosures:  The planners, reviewers, and authors have no declared conflicts of interest 

Format: Web-based training, Self Study

Originally Created: 6/2020

Authors:   Alexandra Brewis-Slade, PhD; Amber Wutich, PhD

Alexandra Brewis, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and President’s Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. She founded the Center for Global Health at Arizona State University in 2006, is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and has served as president of the Human Biology Association. Particularly concerned with how culture, health, and human biology collide, she has conducted field research across the globe, addressing such topics as infertility, depression, malnutrition, obesity, and stigma. 

Amber Wutich, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and President’s Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, where she directs the Center for Global Health. Concerned with the cultural institutions that make us sick and keep us well, her research focuses on basic human challenges like water insecurity, food insecurity, and anxiety. Wutich was selected as Carnegie CASE Arizona Professor of the Year in 2014, in recognition of an outstanding career as a university educator. 

Their most recent book together is “Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).

Arranged by:  Allison Root, MS, RD; Instructional Specialist

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