Women's Symposium at OneAO 2025

We are thrilled to invite you to AO North America's Women's Symposium during One AO 2025.We have organized an exceptional event tailored for women who have pursued careers in surgery.

 

Women’s Symposium, April 24, 2025, 1–4 PM

Presented during OneAO 2025, April 22-28, 2025

Henderson, NV (just outside Las Vegas)

 

Register Now

 

Evaluating the Pound Sign-Hashtag Divide to Engage the Future of Health Equity
Abstract
 
There is a natural fluidity to language --in that it is not inherently intergenerational or cross-cultural.  Instead, it is often sociohistorical, political, and rooted in intragenerational experiences.  
 
As we settle into the age of technology and the construction of large language models (LLMS) in the development of AI, for example, the realities of intragenerational miscommunication become more apparent. Thus, it would behoove us to not only nuance the normalization and legitimization of artificially processed and generated communication in the doctor-patient engagement or documentation, for example,  but to also critically examine how to preemptively address the democratization of misinformation and health inequities via these systems.
 
Join us for an insightful discussion on creating a more equitable future in healthcare.

2025 Women's Symposium Speaker

Imanni Sheppard, PhD, CD

Dr. Sheppard is an Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and theme Lead for Social Justice and Health Equity at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. She is also the Director of Medical Education and Social Scientific Research at the Medical Humanities and Health Disparities Institute where she works with community organizations to help build medical educational materials and develop health and wellness programming for sustainability. In addition, Dr. Sheppard is a member of Xavier University of Louisiana's Community Advisory Board for the College of Pharmacy’s Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education, and a former Ambassador for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)’s Collaborative for Health Equity: to Act, Research, and Generate Evidence (CHARGE).

 

Dr. Sheppard is an alumnus of the University of New Orleans and the University of Houston--where she received her Bachelors degree in Biological Anthropology and her Masters degree in Medical Anthropology, respectively. Thereafter, she continued her education at the University of Texas Medical Branch where (upon graduation) she became the first African American in the United States with a PhD in the Medical Humanities. Her scholarly works include authorship of Health, Healing, and Hurricane Katrina: A Critical Analysis of Psychosomatic Illness in Survivors; Embodied Trauma and the Dissociation of the Self in Dark Denials and Domestic Violence; researcher and narrator for the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health for All Short List film selection: Truth Be Told New Orleans: Righteous Eruption After the Storm (read more); a guest on NPR/Illinois Public Radio (listen here) ; guest panelist on Sirius XM radio show on community medicine, a presentation entitled Medical Inequity and Health Disparities as Thanatopolitics: The Socio-medical Impact of Intergenerational Racialization presented at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France; and presentation of her work entitled Race and Ethnicity at the Intersection of Neoteric Medical Technologies and Technological Development at the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB)s Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards (ITWG), White House Proceedings in Washington, DC. Dr. Sheppard is also an op-Ed Fellow, A Harvard Macy Institute Fellow, and author of several journal articles, health impact assessments, health equity reports, and published poems.