Mountain Area Health Education Center
Department of Continuing Professional Development
3rd Asheville African American Health Symposium
date tbd
Join to receive alerts ⟶
Save the date for our 2024 Symposium!
date tbd
Mountain Area Health Education Center
121 Hendersonville Road
Asheville, NC 28803
The Asheville African American Health Symposium at MAHEC launched in 2020. According to the January 2020, Healthy North Carolina 2030 Report, there are stark disparities in life expectancy across race, geography, and gender, as well as intersections of these characteristics that show wide gaps between groups. The disparities for African Americans compared to whites are due in part to issues stemming from limited healthcare access, lack of trust in medical professionals, and social and economic factors like racism and unemployment. Racial disparities are unremitting and widespread within the African American population.
The goal of the Asheville African American Health Symposium is to have healthcare providers apply learned evidence-based strategies from African American healthcare leaders across the nation in order to continue to improve the health of African Americans. This conference will increase their knowledge and awareness of racism as a healthcare crisis and analyze healthcare disparities affecting our black communities and examine the cause of these disparities, including implicit bias of providers, historical trauma of African Americans, and lack of diversity within the healthcare workforce.
In partnership with
2024 Jacquelyn Hallum KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Portia Allie-Turco, PhD
Portia Allie-Turco, PhD is an assistant professor, program coordinator, and clinic director at SUNY Plattsburgh. She has over 20 years of mental health counseling experience in non-profit management, community mental health counseling, private practice, and university counseling. Her clinical experience fuels her passion to train and prepare students to make an impact in the world through their strong counselor identity and by embodying a commitment to social justice advocacy.
Dr. Allie-Turco’s teaching approach focuses on supporting students in developing critical self-awareness and harnessing their professional power to make a meaningful impact to change lives. She believes in shared learning and often engages students in research projects and professional conference presentations. Her teaching philosophy draws from the principles of existential and African-centered theory as reflected in community building, meaning-making, and storytelling which are integrated into the learning process.
Dr. Allie-Turco uses a strength-based developmental model of supervision to enhance students’ self-efficacy by creating a bridge between counseling theory, interpersonal process, and emerging counseling skills. She strengthens students’ clinical decision-making in diagnosis, treatment planning, and intervention by cultivating hands-on learning and critical skill development during fieldwork experiences.
Being born during the segregation period of Apartheid South Africa, Dr. Allie-Turco believes that education should be accessible to all and is invested in disrupting racial and social inequity to ensure that others succeed despite systemic barriers. Her research focus centers on generational, historical racial, and complex trauma and healing in counseling.
Dr. Allie-Turco believes that rest is restoration and healing therefore she has developed an extensive bucket list of adventurous travel to tropical countries. When not traveling, she enjoys hiking, camping, skiing, or spending time with her family on their Adirondack organic farm.
2024 Bill Gist KEYNOTE SPEAKER
To be announced…
Stay tuned!
Gist Leadership Award
In honor of Dr. William “Bill” Gist, who was dedicated and committed to creating an equitable and inclusive place to work, learn, and receive care as the MAHEC OB/GYN Residency Program Director, the GIST LEADERSHIP AWARD will be presented to a MAHEC employee who exemplifies the qualities Dr. Gist offered to our organization and community. This special award will be presented each year as we continue to celebrate and honor the work and memory of Dr. Gist.
Webinar Series
Miss one of our webinar sessions? Check them out here!
The Mountain Area Health Education Center is proud to host the Asheville African American Health Webinar Series with quarterly sessions for the second year! This series features national experts to continue the discussion and build momentum around closing the gaps in African American healthcare disparities. This year’s topics included nationally published journal reviews that focus on healthcare disparities within the African American community. Click on the button below to view our 2022 webinar sessions.
“Of all the forms of inequity, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King
The Asheville African American Health Webinar Series began in September 2020 with monthly educational sessions. Those sessions continued meeting monthly and led up to an in person/hybrid Symposium in Asheville, North Carolina. The webinar topics ranged from Dismantling Racism in Healthcare, Mental Health for the Black Patient, Black Women’s Health, and more.
Click here to view the 2020/2021 webinar sessions.
The African American Health Webinar Series will continue with quarterly sessions in 2022. Our first session will take place on Friday, February 11, 2022 from Noon to 1:00pm.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
— James Baldwin
