Inclusive Excellence Glossary

A

Anti-oppression
The strategies, theories, actions and practices that actively challenge systems of oppression on an ongoing basis in one’s daily life and in social justice/change work. See the Simmons University for a more complete definition.

Antiracism
The Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health describes antiracism as an active commitment to dismantle racism, which must be addressed across institutional and societal dimensions as well as behavioral and interpersonal.

Anti-Semitism
A hatred or hostility towards Jewish people/people of Jewish heritage or ancestry.

C

COMPASS
An acronym for core online modules to promote and accelerate student success- a series of modules assessing quantitative and writing skills as well as lessons on ethics and justice and other core values of Gillings.

CQI
An acronym for Continuous Quality Improvement.

Cultural Competence
A set of congruent behaviors, attitudes and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations. See the CDC National Prevention Information Network for a more complete definition.

D

Diversity
Individual differences (e.g., personality, prior knowledge, and life experiences) and group/social differences (e.g., race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin and ability as well as cultural, political, religious or other affiliations)

E

Equity
The creation of opportunities for historically underserved populations to have equal access to and participate in educational programs that are capable of closing the achievement gaps in student success and completion.

Equity-Mindedness
“The term ‘Equity-Mindedness’ refers to the perspective or mode of thinking exhibited by practitioners who call attention to patterns of inequity in student outcomes. These practitioners are willing to take personal and institutional responsibility for the success of their students, and critically reassess their own practices. It also requires that practitioners are race-conscious and aware of the social and historical context of exclusionary practices in American Higher Education.” (Association of American Colleges & Universities)

H

Hack-a-thon
An event in which individuals gather to engage in coding or programming in a collaborative environment.

Health Disparities
Preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations. See the CDC website for a more complete definition.

Health Equity
An ongoing process to assure the conditions necessary to achieve optimal health for all people. To achieve health equity, Dr. Camara Jones said the United States needs to (1) value all individuals and populations equally, (2) recognize and rectify historical injustices that have led to disproportionate harm on marginalized communities, and provide resources according to population needs.

Health Inequities
The principle underlying a commitment to reduce—and, ultimately, eliminate—disparities in health and in its determinants, including social determinants. See this Public Health Reports article for more information.

Hegemonic Norms
Socially acceptable principles and standards of behavior of a dominant philosophy.

Homophobia
Hatred or hostility towards homosexuality or people that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT).

I

Inclusive Excellence
The Association of American Colleges and Universities’ (AAC&U) guiding principle for access, student success and high-quality learning. It is designed to help colleges and universities integrate diversity, equity and educational quality efforts into their missions and institutional operations.

Inclusive Excellence Council
A permanent dean’s level committee established to address issues of diversity and inclusion for retention, recruitment, success and satisfaction of staff, faculty and students at the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Inclusion
The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions

Institutional Racism
The pattern of policies and practices in social institutions that subtly, or overtly, discriminate against historically oppressed racial and ethnic minorities that give rise to disparities in socioeconomic status and opportunity.

Interpersonal Racism
Directly perceived hostility and discrimination between two or more people based on race that includes a power dynamic contingent on the differing races of the individuals involved.

J

Jim Crow
A set of local and state laws enforcing racial segregation and discrimination against people of color in the late 18th century up until 1965 in the United States.

M

Marginalized Populations
Those excluded from mainstream social, economic, cultural or political life. See the SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods for a more complete definition.

P

People of Color
Individuals that are not ascribed as or identify as white.

Plan-Do-Study Action Cycle
A scientific model for testing change and improving quality. See the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for more information.

Public health
The science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities. This work is achieved by promoting healthy lifestyles, researching disease and injury prevention and detecting, preventing and responding to infectious diseases.

R

Racial Equity
Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. When we use the term, we are thinking about racial equity as one part of racial justice, and thus we also include work to address root causes of inequities, not just their manifestation. This includes elimination of policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or fail to eliminate them. See the Racial Equity Resource Guide for a more complete definition.

Racism
APHA Past-President Dr. Camara Jones defined racism as a “system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (which is what we call “race”), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.”

S

Social Justice
A political and philosophical theory which asserts that there are dimensions to the concept of justice beyond those embodied in the principles of civil or criminal law, economic supply and demand, or traditional moral frameworks. See Investopedia for a more complete definition.

Structural Bias
Institutional discrimination or prejudice against certain individuals

Structural Racism
Structural racism is defined as the macrolevel systems, social forces, institutions, ideologies and processes that interact with one another to generate and reinforce inequities among racial and ethnic groups. See this NIH manuscript for more information.

Structural and Systemic Racism (cont.).
The Aspen Institute defines Structural and Systemic Racism as a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead, it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist. In many ways “systemic racism” and “structural racism” are synonymous. If there is a difference between the terms, it can be said to exist in the fact that a structural racism analysis pays more attention to the historical, cultural and social psychological aspects of our currently racialized society.

T

Tokenism
The practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce. See Lexico for a more complete definition.

U

URM
An acronym for “underrepresented minority”.

X

Xenophobia
Fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign. See the Merriam-Webster dictionary for a more complete definition.