Institute for Common Power Truth & Purpose Tour for Medical Professionals

The Institute for Common Power Truth and Purpose Learning Tour

Unlocking a Pathway to Health Equity: The Institute for Common Power in collaboration with the University of Washington Department of Medicine

Travel Dates of September 10 - September 15, 2026

The Institute for Common Power (ICP) (501c3) is dedicated to illuminating undervalued, underappreciated, pivotal aspects of our collective history. We offer workshops, courses, lectures, learning tour experiences, and much more to teach about too-often dismissed or lesser known aspects of American history, especially African American history. The Institute’s Truth & Purpose Learning Experience for Healthcare Professionals: Unlocking a Pathway to Health Equity is an immersive journey through the American South to visit key places and people involved in the long historical arcs of Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and African American experiences in America. It will provide healthcare professionals with the ability to recognize and address racial biases. For this journey, we are working in collaboration with the University of Washington Department of Medicine. The Truth & Purpose Learning Tour is a profound experience that will imbue participants with a heightened level of compassion as it inspires you to help create a future defined by integrity and equity, while working to eliminate racial bias in healthcare and health outcomes.

At the Institute for Common Power, we recognize the urgent need to confront and dismantle institutionalized racism within the U.S. healthcare system. To this end, we work in partnership with established medical organizations to expose and eliminate racial disparities in health care by providing education, resources, and support to healthcare professionals and marginalized communities. Our commitment to this cause is unwavering and we are excited to introduce our Truth and Purpose Learning Experience for Healthcare Professionals, set to occur in March 2026.  

The Institute for Common Power Truth and Purpose Learning Experience for Healthcare Professionals is a journey like no other.  Designed to take people in various healthcare occupations through spaces in the American South where structural racism has impacted and defined the lives of countless people for generations–spaces where, despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, people have historically worked to create change.

While our central focus will be the modern American Civil Rights Movement, our journey will place the movement in historical context. The places we visit allow us to examine the long history of people of African descent in America. You cannot understand the Civil Rights Movement without understanding the broader history of African Americans. By extension, you cannot understand our modern existence without exploring the historical processes that have worked to create both tragedy and triumph.

Learning Objectives:

• The participant will understand the relationship between the historical context of race and healthcare in the United States, as well as the contemporary racial disproportionality of healthcare outcomes. By diving into the historical roots of this country to learn about attendant racial and structural disparities born from the past, and to be catalyzed by so many inspiring ordinary people who did extraordinary things, we equip medical professionals the knowledge and insights necessary to recognize and dismantle injustice as they drive lasting change in the field of medicine.

• The participant will gain the ability to recognize and redress biases within themselves, their communities, and their institutions.

• Healthcare professionals who go on this journey return with a better understanding of the power of their role in addressing racism in medicine. It provides them with a community of other healthcare professionals committed to providing culturally competent and compassionate care, changing the lives of their patients and colleagues.

Leadership Team:

This initiative is led by a highly experienced team, including Dr. Terry Anne Scott, Director of the Institute for Common Power and an award-winning historian and professor; Dr. David Domke, Common Power’s Associate Director and award-winning professor of Communication; and Malinda Marroquin, MSHCA, RN, NEA-BC, Senior Director Perioperative Business and Operations at the University of Maryland Capital Region Health; as well as several rising-leaders in the Institute. We will meet with highly regarded healthcare professionals and organizations throughout the journey who are committed to providing equitable and culturally competent care to their communities. Additionally, we are joined throughout the experience by Civil Rights heroes (e.g. Dr. Bernard LaFayette, JoAnne Bland, Charles Mauldin) with whom we have built relationships over several years of visiting Alabama. Other changemakers, including poets and artists and lawyers, also join us along the way.

The places we visit will allow us to examine the long history of people of African descent in this country, with specific emphasis on the modern American Civil Rights Movement. Few places are more important than the locations we will visit. Atlanta, Georgia, is the home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, legendary organizer Ms. Ella Baker, former civil rights hero and U.S. Representative John Lewis, and now U.S. Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock and national voting rights leader Stacey Abrams. We will begin our learning tour there and then will spend most of our time in Alabama in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma – a geographical triangle in an east-to-west strip of the South known as the “Black Belt,” named originally for the rich soil coloring but that over time has taken on reference to the African American population there that has been a catalyst for social change in America. Among the people we will meet:

· Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr., a member of the inner circle for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., international nonviolence leader, and Chair today of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Board

· Joanne Bland, a Bloody Sunday marcher at age 11, founder today of Journeys for the Soul and leader of the campaign to create “Footsoldiers Park” in Selma

· Hank Stewart, Poet Laureate for the state of Georgia and protege of Dr. CT Vivian and other Atlanta-based civil rights leaders

· Charles Mauldin, a Selma AL student leader and Blood Sunday marcher at age 17, lifelong community leader in Alabama, and introducer of President Joe Biden at Selma Jubilee 2023

The trip is priced at $3,000/person for a shared room and $3,500 for a single room, to cover costs of hotel rooms, ground transportation, speakers, food, and various fees. Participants also purchase their own airfare. The Institute for Common Power is pricing this trip at cost to make it as accessible as possible! If you wish to pay by check (and thus no Eventbrite fees), please contact david@commonpower.org for details.

We ask participants to arrive in Atlanta GA by Wednesday evening September 9, and we begin our trip early the next morning, Thursday, September 10. We return to Atlanta in the afternoon on the following Tuesday, September 15, with flight departures for everyone working smoothly after 4:15 pm ET.

For more information, please contact Dr. Terry Anne Scott at terry@commonpower.org

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