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Creole Heritage Month + Hoodoo Heritage Month 🇭🇹✨

A Disruptive Health Communicators Perspective:

What happens when communities become the authors of their own health narratives?

For me, critical cultural health communication means moving beyond communicating to communities and creating space to listen to, learn from, and amplify the knowledge communities have ALWAYS carried.

Although my research is scholarship, it is also an archive, a cultural intervention, and a love letter to Haitian knowledge systems. 🇭🇹🖤

The work brought together:

👁️Cultural Identity — examining how Haitian identity shapes the ways birth, motherhood, healing, and wellness are understood and communicated.

🗣️Language Justice — recognizing Kreyòl and culturally rooted ways of communicating as legitimate forms of knowledge and NOT barriers to “better” health communication.

🌴 Caribbean Discourse — situating Haitian birthwork within broader Caribbean histories of colonialism, resistance, spirituality, migration, and cultural survival.

✨ADRs (African Diaspora Religions) — acknowledging the ways spirituality, ancestral intelligence (AI), ritual, and Indigenous/African-derived healing traditions inform Haitian understandings of health and birth.

🧠Collective Consciousness — exploring how digital spaces can become contemporary lakou: places where people gather, remember, teach, affirm, and collectively make meaning.

👀👂🏾Want to hear more?

Join me today at 6pm for @kilti_lakay Pen Ak Kafe’s community discussion on the history of Haitian Kreyòl, the impact of the language, and more! 🥖☕🇭🇹

Link in @kilti_lakay bio

Tag a friend who should attend.

#CreoleHeritageMonth #HoodooHeritageMonth #phd #culture #explorepage

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As a critical cultural health communication scholar, citing Black scholars is not simply about increasing the diversity of a reference list. It is an epistemological, methodological, and ethical practice. Citation determines whose knowledge is recognized, preserved, circulated, and positioned as foundational within a field.

Why citing Black scholars matters

❤️It challenges epistemic erasure.

Black scholars have produced foundational knowledge about race, racism, culture, health inequities, communication, identity, technology, and power. Citing that scholarship makes visible intellectual contributions that have historically been marginalized, overlooked, or attributed to others.

💚It situates your scholarship within an intellectual lineage.

Citing Black scholars allows me to explicitly locate my research across traditions and disciplines such as Black feminist thought, critical race theory, Black studies, cultural studies, Digital Black Feminism, and critical health communication.

🖤It recognizes lived experience as a source of knowledge.

Black scholarship often challenges the assumption that legitimate knowledge must come exclusively from dominant Western academic traditions. This is particularly important when studying Black communities, where culture, history, embodiment, spirituality, community memory, and lived experience can shape health meanings and practices.

Tag a Black scholar or text you've recently cited in your work below 👇🏾

#phd #adjunctlife #BlackStudies #healthcommunication #blackfeminism

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Healthy boundaries are part of good teaching. 📚✨

As an adjunct professor, it can be easy to feel like you have to be available 24/7, answer every email immediately, accommodate every request, and carry the weight of every student’s challenge.

Being a caring professor doesn’t mean being constantly available. Boundaries help us stay present, prepared, and effective.

This semester, I’m reminding myself: I can care deeply about my students and still protect my time, energy, and well-being.

What are some boundaries you are setting this academic school year or in your workplace?

#AdjunctProfessor #AdjunctLife #HigherEducation #ProfessorLife #AcademicLife

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Your first week as a GA or adjunct professor is less about proving that you know everything and more about establishing credibility, structure, warmth, and clear expectations. Your first-week mindset should not focus on impressing students; aim for:

“I need to create a classroom where students feel intellectually challenged, respected, and capable of succeeding.”

📝Know the logistics before you walk into class.
Make sure you have access to LMS/course shell (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.)

📝Establish your classroom culture immediately.
One of the most important things you can tell students:
“You don’t have to agree with each other, but you do have to engage each other respectfully.”

📝Set boundaries around email
GAs + Adjuncts can quickly become overwhelmed by student emails.Put your communication policy in the syllabus and reinforce throughout the semester.

📝Don’t try to cover too much on Day 1
Your first class should accomplish three things:
Connect → Orient → Engag

Tag a new professor or share a tip for teaching in higher education below 👇🏾

#Highereducation #higherlearning #phd #healthcommunication #explore

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Tomorrow is my first day back in the classroom, but this time as an adjunct professor teaching Interpersonal Communication and Principles of Speech.

During my time at @howard1867 I taught Principles of Speech at @hu_chsoc to undergraduate students while completing my graduate coursework. An assistantship allows you to move from being a student who understands the material to becoming an educator who can teach the material.

Here are (5) ways a graduate assistantship prepares you for adjunct teaching:

📝Engaging in Department Activities
Gives you exposure to academic expectations, course administration, and departmental processes. Helps you understand the institutional side of higher education.

📝Working with faculty
Academic mentorship or sponsorship that allows you to build/strengthen relationships for future opportunities (e.g., employment, research collaboration, funding, fellowships, etc.).

📝 Holding Office Hours
Builds student advising, mentoring, and communication skills. As an instructor it’s a great opportunity to prepare, organize, and grade assignments.

📝Leading Discussions
Develops your ability to engage students and facilitate academic dialogue. Builds confidence in lectures, presentations, and scholarly communication.

📝Research and Scholarly Writing
Strengthens your subject-matter expertise and ability to bring current research into the classroom.

Being a GA fast tracked me into guest lecturing then adjuncting. However, this wouldn’t be possible without building and establishing my community.

Tag a PhD student/candidate, graduate assistant or new adjunct professor below👇🏾

Share your research topic/area of expertise 💡

#phd #highereducation #adjunctlife #howarduniversity #washingtondc

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Listen, I know that you already have your schedule outlined from now until December 20th, but here are some dates you should also block out on your calendar to maintain a healthy academic-life balance:

🗓One day each week to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

🗓Schedule days to call family and friends

🗓Solo Date Nights

🗓Community Service

🗓A road trip

🗓 Friend Date

🗓 Sunday dinner with friends

🗓 Game night with friends

🗓 Dessert night with friends

🗓 Movie night with friends

Fight the academic blues this fall through communal care and connection. Tag (3) of your friends you’d plan a kickback with.

#PostDoc #PhD #Phdlife #HBCU #howardalumni

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Black Breastfeeding Week 🤎🤱🏾

This Black Breastfeeding Week, I joined @mamatotovillage for Fish Fryday in Southeast DC reminding me that community outreach is about meeting people where they are. Today we spoke to different DC natives about communal care, postpartum support, autonomy, and breastfeeding equity.

Breastfeeding equity means asking:

🍼Who has access to support?
🍼Who feels seen?
🍼Who has the resources to make the choice they want?
🍼And what systems need to change?

For Black mothers, breastfeeding can be shaped by much more than individual choice. Access to culturally responsive care, paid leave, lactation support, workplace protections, transportation, housing stability, and trusted community networks all influence whether a mother is able to initiate and continue breastfeeding.

Here are a few facts to know:

🤱🏾The CDC recommends exclusive breastfeeding for about the first 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding alongside complementary foods for 2 years or longer, as mutually desired by parent and child.

🤱🏾Breastfeeding initiation among Black mothers in the U.S. has increased significantly over time, but racial disparities in breastfeeding duration and exclusivity persist.

🤱🏾Black mothers are less likely than White mothers to meet recommended breastfeeding duration targets, reflecting systemic barriers, and not a lack of commitment or care.

🤱🏾Community-based doulas, lactation professionals, peer counselors, and culturally responsive birthworkers can play an important role in helping families navigate breastfeeding and postpartum care.

And in Washington, DC, organizations like Mamatoto Village demonstrate what it looks like to center Black families through community-rooted maternal health support.

Support Black birthworkers. Support Black mothers. Support Black babies.

#BlackBreastfeedingWeek #MamatotoVillage #BlackMaternalHealth #BreastfeedingEquity #WashingtonDC

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A day at the Library of Congress @librarycongress National Book Festival was a reminder that libraries are more than places where we preserve books, they are places where we preserve memory, culture, and history.

As a public health historian, I’m especially interested in what happens when we bring digital archives into health communication research. Archives allow us to examine the stories, images, media, policies, and community narratives that have shaped how maternal health and WHOSE health has been understood over time.

Digital archives help me explore the history of Black maternal health in the Americas. Most recently I explored how 🇭🇹 women and birthworkers create online communities which I define as “Digital Lakous” and circulate knowledge across generations and digital platforms to create their own archives. For instance, my ‘Haitian Birthworkers in the Digital Space Study’ examines how (3) birthworkers @lakoudantes @ingraceyoga and @besoulebotaniques use Instagram as a digital archive to produce, promote, and preserve 🇭🇹 traditional birthing practices. Black birthworkers are creating their own digital archives through shared knowledge and public memory.

This is where public memory becomes essential in critical cultural health communication. We cannot fully understand contemporary health communication without asking:

Whose voices were documented?
Whose knowledge was erased?
Who had the power to define the narrative?
Who preserves cultural and ancestral practices?
How does history continue to shape health outcomes today?

For Black maternal health research, looking backward isn’t simply about documenting the past. It’s about understanding the systems, narratives, and cultural knowledge that influence the present and imagining more equitable futures.

📖 Archives tell us where we’ve been and helps us understand why. Critical cultural health communication research asks what we do with that knowledge next.

#HealthCommunication #BlackMaternalHealth DigitalArchive

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Changes to TPS policies will likely lead to family separation and have a significant implications on the maternal health outcomes of new and expectant Haitian mothers amidst the multilayered Black maternal health crisis.

Research shows that transmigrant Haitian mothers face heightened maternal health risks driven by severe immigration-related stress and systemic inequities compounded by language barriers, stigma, and disconnection from culturally familiar systems of care.

Organizations like @mamatotovillage follows a culturally responsive care model that provides mothers the resources they need to achieve healthy maternal health outcomes amidst any crisis.

Click the link in my bio for more on TPS, birth justice, and Black maternal health equity.

👕 @blkhlth

#Blackmaternalhealth #healthcommunication #blackmamasmatter #maternalandchildhealth #Haitian

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One of my favorite 2026 readings so far is Mutual Aid by @spade.dean who writes about the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. I have many takeaways which I will share on my Substack. However, here are the THREE key elements of mutual aid:

1️⃣Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.

2️⃣Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.

3️⃣Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

Mutual Aid is a community organizer’s must have books. (This is not an ad, but I’m so serious.)

Interested in joining me for the next mutual aid project? Follow @mamatotovillage + sign up to volunteer today.

#mutualaid #healthcommunication #BlackMaternalHealth #birthjustice #dc

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What does it really take to navigate the journey from a Master’s degree to a PhD and build a meaningful career in research?

In this episode of the Research, Scholarships & Stories Podcast, Dr. Joyline Chepkorir sits down with @thenpthatcares , PhD, MSN, FNP-C, RN-OB, AAHIVS, for an honest and insightful conversation about academic readiness, finding your focus, mentorship, building community, and redefining what success really means.

From overcoming a scarcity mindset to understanding that growth doesn’t happen alone, this conversation offers practical insights and encouragement for anyone pursuing advanced education, research, or their next big opportunity.

Watch, listen, subscribe, and follow for more conversations on research, scholarships, academic journeys, and stories that inspire.

#research #phdjourney #scholarships #academia #mentorship

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Mamatoto Village is doing powerful work to support Black mothers, babies, and families by creating spaces where people can access culturally responsive care, community, education, and support.

Mutual aid recognizes that communities already have knowledge, relationships, skills, and resources that we can use to care for one another.

For Black mothers, this matters because access to quality maternal health care is not equal.

Black women continue to experience disproportionately high rates of pregnancy-related complications and maternal mortality, and too often, our concerns are dismissed or our experiences are overlooked.

Access to Black maternal health care means more than having a provider who looks like you.

It means building systems where Black mothers are not only surviving pregnancy and childbirth, but are supported in thriving.

Volunteering with Mamatoto Village reminded me that change happens at both the systemic level and the community level.

Sometimes advocacy looks like policy.

Sometimes it looks like research.

And sometimes, it looks like simply showing up.

Showing up for a mother, a baby, and a community.

#BlackMaternalHealth #mutualaid #washingtondc #healthcommunication #birthjustice

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