Black-led Community Health Initiatives: Reflections from the Dunbar Wellness Project in Tucson, Arizona

An article by Associate Professor Megan Carney, “Black-led Community Health Initiatives: Reflections from the Dunbar Wellness Project in Tucson, Arizona” was published in Practicing Anthropology. You can download the paper from this link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08884552.2024.2387593?src=exp-la

Abstract: Antiracist scholars and practitioners continue to interrogate the relationship between place and health amid decades of discriminatory policies and anti-Black spatial logics in the United States. Troubled by the continuation of worsening health disparities, especially along lines of race, some scholars and practitioners have turned to placemaking as a framework for guiding community health initiatives. From 2019 to 2021, the
Dunbar Wellness Project, based in Tucson, Arizona, was a community-based health and wellness project that sought to reclaim and affirm a Black sense of place while exploring the root causes of racialized health inequities, increasing self-determination around health and wellness, and uplifting and honoring ancestral and collective care practices that have been foundational to community survival.