BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — A free two-day symposium in Baton Rouge will focus on health-related topics, including Black maternal health care.
Southern University’s law center, university and museum of art and culture are hosting the Henrietta Lacks Symposium on March 22-23. This year’s theme, according to organizers, is “Humanizing HER” and focuses on fertility, health equity, maternal health and medical racism.
On Friday, March 22, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ben Crump will talk about academic work and advocacy. On Saturday, there will be more conversations with panelists of advocates, authors, legal scholars and health care professionals. They’ll talk about the event themes and give an update on the Lacks court case.
Event organizers said the conference “aims to elevate Henrietta Lacks’ family’s 70-year quest for justice and illuminate the crucial intersections of health equity, fertility, medical racism, and Black maternal well-being.”
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, Henrietta Lacks was a Black woman whose cancer cells are used for medical research, specifically “used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses on the growth of cancer cells without experimenting on humans.”
The webpage about Lacks states that Johns Hopkins should’ve done more to inform and work with her family, adding, “Though the collection and use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells in research was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s, the laws protecting research subjects have evolved.”
The symposium will be at the Southern University Museum of Art Cultural and Heritage Center. It’s free to attend, but registration is required.