0:00:00.5 Speaker 1: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Mo Lewis, the Prevention Specialist at NSVRC. On today's episode, I'm joined by our Executive Director, Yolanda Edrington, and our training specialist, Louie Marvin, to talk about why we're doing this series, what we have to look forward to in upcoming episodes, and the connections between health equity and sexual violence prevention.

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0:00:45.6 S1: Hi, this is Mo with NSVRC, and I'm here with Yolanda and Louie, and we're gonna be talking with you about the upcoming COVID-19 podcasts series through NSVRC. And I'm wondering if you two just wanted to introduce yourselves real quick? 

0:01:01.8 Speaker 2: Sure, I'm Yolanda Edrington. I'm the director at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

0:01:08.9 Speaker 3: And I'm Louie Marvin and I'm the Training Specialist at the NSVRC.

0:01:13.9 S1: So we wanted to talk a little bit about why we're excited about this series and what we're looking forward to. We know that the current pandemic is this moment in time that we wanted to meet. We wanted to meet that moment, highlight the work that other people are doing. And one of the things we wanted to focus on internally while we're doing this podcast series is the fact that this pandemic didn't create these health inequities, it's just highlighting them. And I know we wanted to have this series as a way to open up the space to have people talk about how their work has changed, what sorts of creative adaptations they've made, and that sort of thing. So I'd love to hear from both of you. What have you been thinking about in terms of why this series is important to you? 

0:02:00.4 S2: Some of the major things that has come up for me throughout 2020 is about the flexibility or being more flexible especially at work and understanding everyone's lives has changed, including your own. And I know we say this self-care and be kind to one another, but really diving into what does that really look like... Like many people, the pandemic just forced us to rethink about how we function daily, personally and professionally, and I think that flexibility falls right into that, in that being kind to each other. And for me, during 2020, sometimes daily, I've been in a space of reimagining how I do things. Re-imagining how I work with my co-workers, how I work with my own kid, like many people, my kid is at home learning, and what that looks like. And I'm thankful that my co-workers are patient and flexible with me with my new home life, so it also encourages me to be patient and flexible with others during this time, 'cause we're all have been affected somehow some way. That state of just re-imagining everything that we do is where I'm at today and where I've been at probably the last six months, putting some real thought and effort into what my daily life looks like.

0:03:37.0 S3: Yeah, in the pandemic, a lot of people are thinking about new ways to do prevention too, and to do... New ways to do everything to Yolanda's point. And I think what's really cool about this podcast series is that we're talking with some people who've been really creative in the face of the need to do things in new ways. And I think what has made these groups really successful is that they have been conscious of how their work is addressing the conditions that you mentioned, Mo, that predated COVID. So I think that's really been an important part about why they've been able to meet the needs of their communities in this moment when they've had to pivot in certain ways, but they've really been keeping that foundation of addressing health inequities to begin with.

0:04:30.1 S1: Yeah, I really like that connection. I'm gonna be talking on one of the podcasts with some colleagues from Seattle about some sexual violence prevention lessons that people can use in schools right now. They are online lessons and I'm really looking forward to hearing the considerations from them about how you design lessons for this online format, knowing that it's kind of a sensitive topic, knowing that students are home, they might have privacy or not privacy, knowing that people have all different types of home situations. And I'm wondering who you all are looking forward to hearing from.

0:05:07.2 S2: Alright, so to piggyback off of my point earlier about homeschooling with my daughter, one of the people I'm looking forward to the most hearing from through this series is Tonjie Reese, just to hear about the connection that they've made with media literacy and the pandemic. Because all of our traditional face-to-face trainings, meetings, and/or conferences have been cancelled, and we have to really rely heavily on virtual platforms like social media and things like that. So I think it'll be really interesting to hear how... To hear their tips, tips of the trade, and what can we do better or just learn from what they're doing and use that in our everyday lives, whether that be for me at work or me at home.

0:05:55.6 S3: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that conversation too, Yolanda, and I'm also looking forward to talking with the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault about their emergent space booklet. So they are really drawing from Adrienne Maree Brown's Emergent Strategy as a way of complicating and moving beyond concepts like safe spaces and brave spaces, and they've made this tool available to the whole world, and it grew out of some work they were doing with LGBTQ students, and that type of work is really close to my heart and my history. And so they just did this one project that grew into this bigger thing, and so a lot of what the people who created the booklet are thinking about is how to be adaptive and trauma-informed, and how to set up a space so that participants are acknowledging upfront how power can function to harm people. So there's a lot going on there in terms of doing our work during the pandemic, and also addressing the health inequities that we've been talking about.

0:07:02.0 S1: That's really exciting. It's cool to think about how we can make these shifts, not do everything different, but change the format or tweak some things. One of the episodes that I'm not doing the interview for, but I'm really excited to hear about is a student from Fort Lewis College. She wanted to use one of her indigenous values in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 on her campus, and it's actually turned into this entire campaign. So before we're done, I wanted to talk a little bit about what are some of the hopes you have for how this series can really help us and help other people in their lives and in their work.

0:07:42.6 S2: I think about the health inequities that you talked about earlier, Mo, that you explained. I really want people to remember that COVID is just putting a bright light on some long-standing, grossly accepted health inequities that many Black and indigenous people of color have experienced for decades. This is not new. So I hope that as we listen to all of our participants of this series, that it encourages us to question and fight against processes and policies that continue to perpetuate the health inequities experienced by many Black and indigenous people of color. That would be the thing that I hope is the takeaway is that, this isn't new. So what are we gonna do about it? We see it, we know it. It's no longer like, "Oh my goodness, I didn't know." If nothing is COVID really put a beaming light on it. Now, what are we gonna do? Like actionable. So that's what I take from the participants, that this is actionable. It can show examples of what can be done, and we take that into our communities, into our personal lives.

0:09:00.7 S3: Yes. Yeah, I'm also hoping this series will, yeah, help people ground their work in health equity. And I hope that the listeners will be inspired by the way that the people that we're talking to in this series are doing things in new ways. And I hope that people will learn really from the processes and the principles that they're hearing about. So it's not that we want listeners to copy a specific program that they're hearing about, but that they're using like what went into creating those programs to be inspired. So I'm hoping these examples will spark some ideas that will inspire some creativity in the communities that our listeners are working in, in their local context.

0:09:43.7 S1: It's so nice to hear about what other people are doing. It gives us these ideas of what we can do in our own lives, like different options or ways to shift and move things in a different way. And I'm also excited to hear from people in their own words too. There's something really nice about getting to hear from someone directly from them in their own way of speaking and with their own voice.

0:10:05.8 S2: Yeah, and sometimes I think we're scared to take a step. We need an example and maybe scared is not the word to use, but that's the word that we're gonna... I'm gonna use right now. That we're scared to take a step to push against this normal behavior that people have been practicing for so long. So we do need examples and that it is doable, that we can really do something different. We don't have to stay with how things... Or not even used to 'cause it's happening today. But, you know, so it's not a used to, but how things are happening. We don't have to be okay with that.

0:10:46.5 S1: It was so interesting about how we had to make these big shifts in our work because of COVID-19, and one of the biggest shifts for us is we're all working at home, or almost all of us are working at home right now. But it's totally different than it was before. It's this big shake-up, and to me it's like this weird silver lining, that we had to shake so many things up, that it kind of gives us this opportunity to really think and be mindful of like, "What do we wanna keep from this experience? What's working now better than it was working before, and what do we wanna keep with us moving forward?"

0:11:22.0 S3: Yeah. I was thinking recently about how there was that kind of brief period of time at the beginning of the pandemic when some people were talking about COVID as like this great equalizer because anyone could get it. And then very quickly that rightly shifted to thinking of COVID as more of a great revealer of what's already been there and... Yeah, and it's just interesting to think about how far our story has come during the pandemic. Because of course, we know doing public health work that these health inequities impact any kind of public health prevention work that anyone's trying to do, including in our field of sexual violence. So yeah, I would just keep thinking about that, how the pandemic and the way that we're talking about prevention, it's just so mirrored in terms of COVID and in sexual violence. It's really a chance for us to talk about prevention with the broader public in a time when people are maybe thinking about it, hopefully in a new way. [chuckle]

0:12:38.1 S1: Hopefully it's unavoidable to think about it. Now we have this example that we can all relate to in some way. Even though our experiences are different, it's still this shared reality that we're all living in.

0:12:51.6 S2: I'm like... It was something that Louie said that just had me like... And it was probably healthcare that... [chuckle] I'm thinking of...

0:12:58.5 S3: Public health, COVID is the great revealer...

0:13:00.7 S2: Yeah, thinking of Hilton and the LGBT center. 'Cause it really is the great revealer. You know what I mean? Just to... To me this is not new and I know that's hard for some people to hear, because all of these health inequities that... And I'm gonna say, we have been experiencing are unveiled, and it's been unveiled, but people are paying attention because we are having this shared experience. That this unavoidable shared experience with COVID-19, it kinda makes you have to pay attention, and it's unveiling all of these things that have been there, layers of it, and it's... No longer someone is able to say, "I did not know." So, the blissed ignorance does not exist. There's no possible way that you can still be blissfully ignorant. You can choose to not do anything, but so you can't say you're unaware, 'cause you are aware. You're just making a choice not to do anything. So, I hope with this series, as we just said earlier, it just continues to build on we can do something, and these examples are a start.

0:14:23.9 S1: I totally agree. It's weird that something can happen that changes everything, but it does illustrate all of the inequities, for sure. One of the things that you mentioned, Louie, was there was this idea that was floating around that COVID is this great equalizer, that anybody could get it. And it's like, yeah, that's true, anybody could get it, but then in terms of of health outcomes or how you're treated at the hospital, or even the infrastructure of where you live and how things are set up, it's so different, based on race, based on class. One of the things that I've been reading a lot about is how, at the beginning, people were talking about, like, "Oh, this is only really dangerous for people with underlying conditions," and how insulting that is to people with disabilities because it's basically saying, like, "Oh, it's fine if you die," and that's not true.

0:15:14.7 S2: And resources where... I think there's this thought out there that these resources are readily available to everyone, they're not. Like, testing is readily available to everyone. I'd like to say it is not. Depending on where you live at... If you're in a rural area or an area that doesn't have a lot of public transportation and you don't have your own transportation, or it's only on this day, you can only get a ride on that day. And I'm just thinking of one of our centers here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that are doing testing, and though it's a city, it's still not readily available. And I have to give our centers credit, they're doing the best that they can, it's a small center, so I don't wanna beat up on them or anything like that, but for as many people that are in our area, to have such limited sites and limited times available and it's not even every day that testing is available to us. That access is just... I don't know, it just makes me think of that when I went in for testing... I have a car, I have flexibility at work, I can drive to this place, which I drove an hour away to get a test. Someone else may not be able to do that. They may have to wait, and when you're told, "Well if you're not experiencing any symptoms or if you're not this, if you're not that, then you won't be able to come and get a test." And if you don't know of more resources, then what? It makes me... It was a hard reality, sitting in when I was looking to get tested, so...

0:17:02.5 S1: I keep thinking about the real big difference between people who have to go in somewhere to go to work and people who are able to stay home and work. And if this was 15 years ago in my life, I would be one of the people who has to go in to work somewhere, and it feels dangerous to have to do that. And then, thinking about how we have this system set up where people don't really have the choice to go in to work. Our systems and our institutions, they haven't provided the financial security and options for people to be able to really make that choice, to truly make that choice to do what feels safest. And all of that is really just highlighting that this stuff exists already. No one is coming out saying, "Hey, I'm gonna create this new policy to have some people be treated better than other people, or have some hospitals be able to have more staffing and resources than others, or have some people be able to get money to survive and then others not. It's these same systems that have always already been in place. And now, it's just more visible to people who maybe haven't had to notice these things before.

0:18:09.1 S1: And it's like what you were saying, Yolanda, it doesn't allow anyone anymore to be able to live in that blissful ignorance. Or, if they do, it's a choice they're making. So, maybe one of the things we should talk about is how sexual violence prevention is related to health inequities. I think, sometimes it's a hard thing for people to wrap their minds around, and now we're adding COVID-19 to it too, so I was just wondering if we could talk about how we see these as related to each other.

0:18:39.9 S2: I know just a small... And this is very... A small kinda big picture thought when I connect the two. Yeah, so kinda makes me think about our [0:18:52.1] ____. Even though this is kinda small big picture... Or, not even small big picture. That kinda makes no sense, 'cause if it's small, it's not big picture, but just so... A tip of the ice... Just kind of a tip of the iceberg when making the connection. So, you have COVID and some of the preventative things that they want us to do is wash our hands, wear a mask, and how that not only helps the person, but it helps everyone around you when you wash your hands for those 20 seconds or more, or wear a mask. Not or. And wear a mask. I wanna say and. So with sexual violence, there are things that we can do to prevent sexual violence like consent is one of the things I'm like, consent is our... What can I relate it to? Our mask? Consent is our number one thing. And when we're talking about prevention, where those are... That's why I said just kind of tip of the iceberg when we're talking about prevention. So just making that small connection of there are absolute things that we can do as individuals and as community and society as a whole to prevent sexual violence. And the same thing with COVID, there are things that we can do to prevent, and those are just the two main that we always hear about that I wanted to mention.

0:20:14.2 S1: One of the ways that really makes a strong connection for me about how health equity and health inequity is related to prevention, is this idea that each of us is really influenced by the world that we live in, by the people who we know, by the communities that we live in, by the programs and resources that are available to us. And so many of the things that influence us the most are these things that happen at this really large scale, kind of like how we're seeing with COVID that some communities have better access to things than other communities, some communities have better programs or systems put in place. We're even seeing differences state by state in terms of how things are happening with COVID prevention and treatment. So with sexual violence prevention, we can really think about how we build the healthiest communities possible, so that people will be best situated to make the choices that they wanna make, the healthiest choices that they can make.

0:21:14.5 S1: So in that kind of systemic level, I feel like there's such a connection between our health, health equity, these larger health inequities, and then how sexual violence shows up in our communities too. And we know that sexual violence isn't something that just exists on its own, all of the different public health issues that exist out there, they all go together and they all influence each other. So I think improving health equity will just really improve every one of those sectors, including sexual violence. It makes it really vital and really important. So the next steps for this is that we will be putting out all of the episodes that are upcoming that we've talked about here and you've heard about. And after that, you'll hear from Louie and Yolanda and I again, when we do a wrap-up episode to talk about all of the things that we've learned and the things that we wanna bring with us during and after this pandemic. So thanks so much, both of you, for being here and doing this. It's really nice to get to talk together about this and put it out there for other people too, so thank you.

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0:22:38.5 S1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Resources on the Go. For more resources and information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website at nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc.org.