PAUSE Racism in Healthcare Workshop

In this highly interactive, engaging, and informative 3-hour IN-PERSON workshop, PAUSE Executive Director and Founder, Alica Forneret, will cover how identity impacts the death, dying, and grief experience. Together, we will explore how race, culture, and other identity markers can influence the type of support providers can offer to their clients.

Attendees should be prepared to engage in individual exercises to examine their own identity and how it’s impacted their personal grief experience, as well as small group work and large group discussions to center storytelling and resourcing from community. Attendees will walk away with practical ideas for expanding their approach to making culturally-relevant referrals, as well as a customized list of grief resources by and for People of Color.

Topics covered:

• Cultural and systemic blockages between POC clients and mental health support and the mental health system
• “Whole person care” and the constellation of grief and end-of-life support within POC communities
• Grief and other lived experiences tied to identity/race (cultural bereavement, collective grief, etc.)
• Seeking out and making culturally-relevant referrals to honor your personal limits
• Storytelling about first-hand experiences of POC seeking and receiving therapy and grief counseling

Topic/focus

• How identity (race and other factors) impacts death, dying, and grief experience
• Lived experience
• Intergenerational (in our bones)
• Cultural norms, taboos, and practices
• Resistance to/mistrust with mental health and medical systems
• Connecting to their own lived experience and identity
• Referral resources (outside of mental health resources) and processes

This workshop is for you if:

• Your job/role/profession involves supporting folks through grief, death, and bereavement leave - we often invite healthcare, mental health, educational, social work, and deathcare professionals to these workshops
• You are craving more information about the realities of how identity impacts our experiences with death and grief
• You want tools and resources to refer out to, learn from, and use in your work.

If you have any questions, or if you’d like a private offering of this workshop, please reach out to [email protected].

Accessibility:Conference center facilities are designed to include the full participation and enjoyment of people with physical disabilities as well as those who are not fluent in English.

Meeting rooms and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. A list of recommended interpreters for most commonly used languages in California is available upon request.

At The Center for Healthy Communities Los Angeles and Sacramento, assisted listening devices are available for the deaf and hearing impaired, and simultaneous interpretation equipment is available in some rooms.

Alica Forneret (she/her) is an educator, speaker, and consultant dedicated to creating new spaces for people to explore grief and grieving. She is the Founder and Executive Director of PAUSE, a nonprofit focused on supporting Communities of Color through grief and end of life. Alica's writing and work about grief, work, and race have been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Huffington Post, GQ, and more.

is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting people of color through grief and end of life with safe, culturally-sensitive, and expert-informed resources. We offer digital and in-person resources and programming serving individuals, companies, and deathcare professionals.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The California Endowment Oakland Regional Office, 2000 Franklin Street, Oakland, United States