”I thought I understood a lot of about racism in the United States and I came up so short. And this Proximity Project really was just so enlightening and fulfilling...
-The Proximity Project: Healthcare ParticipantCohort 1
Research shows that many “diversity programs” fail because leaders are rarely pushed to become truly proximate to the people and issues they discuss during mandatory training.
The Proximity Project is not an isolated, intellectual exercise— leaders connect closely with patients, caregivers, and community leaders whose truth and insights inform participants’ reflections and actions.
TPP cohorts meet virtually for 2.5-hour training sessions each week for eight weeks. During these sessions, participants discuss assigned readings, complete assessment and reflection activities, gain actionable insights from guest speakers, learn about models and case studies of serving marginalized communities, and develop closer cross-institutional relationships. The work during the sessions is complemented by a series of pragmatic assignments that bring institutions closer to the communities they serve.
Fall 2024 Cohort: September 27 through November 15, 2024
The Proximity Project – Healthcare is an eight-week cohort experience for leaders in the healthcare industry (health systems, public health, community-based health organizations, academic medicine, etc.) who want to examine and reform how they interact with and serve communities of color.
The Proximity Project is not an isolated, intellectual exercise— leaders connect closely with patients, caregivers, and community leaders whose truth and insights inform participants’ reflections and actions.
TPP cohorts meet virtually for 2.5-hour training sessions each week for eight weeks. During these sessions, participants discuss assigned readings, complete assessment and reflection activities, gain actionable insights from guest speakers, learn about model and case studies for supporting communities of color, and develop closer cross-institutional relationships. The work during the sessions is complemented by a series of pragmatic assignments that bring institutions closer to the communities they serve.
Beyond the our flagship eight-week program, The Proximity Project-Healthcare also offers customized consulting and training support for organizations. Contact Atnre Alleyne (atnre@theproximitypro.com) if this is of interest.
The Proximity Project was started in 2020 by Atnre Alleyne after multiple conversations with leaders in philanthropy and the education sector about how their organizations could better support communities of color.
While many of these leaders were responding by reflecting on diversity and inclusion in their organizations, given his experience as the founder of two education nonprofit organizations (TeenSHARP and DelawareCAN), Atnre felt that authentic proximity to marginalized communities was a critical missing piece.
TeenSHARP has been working alongside families for over a decade to prepare talented Black and Latino students for highly-selective colleges and equity-centered leadership. TeenSHARP has hundreds of students and alumni across the Philadelphia region. This proximity has given Atnre rare insight into the holistic needs (education, health, employment, etc.) of Black and Latino families and how well they are being met by the institutions that are supposed to serve them.
The Proximity Project – Healthcare was designed in partnership with healthcare practitioners and executives to craft a unique experience that facilitates a dramatic shift in mindsets, policies, and practices within our country’s health sector.
The next The Proximity Project- Healthcare cohort will begin on Friday September 29th, 2023 and ends on Friday, November 17, 2023. The sessions will take place on Fridays from 8-10:30 am Eastern. The program is 100% virtual.
The spring cohort will start on Friday, February 2, 2024 and run through Friday, March 22, 2024. All sessions will take place virtually on Fridays from 8-10:30 am Eastern.
The typical schedule of topics covered are as follows. However, we always leave room for modifications based on the unique dynamics and needs of each cohort.
The program is designed for leaders (across roles) in health systems, public health, community health organizations, academic medicine, etc. who hope to improve healthcare experiences and health outcomes among communities of color.
The ideal participant is someone who will champion and/or lead equity and racial justice efforts in their particular organization.
It is totally fine if the participant is emerging in their understanding of equity, inclusion, and racial justice. That’s actually typical.
It’s just critical that participants are committed to learning and doing the personal/organizational work needed to promote equity, racial justice, and inclusion.
We would actually recommend organizations send a team of 3-6 leaders to get the maximum benefit from the program.
While the program is designed for participants who come to the conversation of race, equity, and racism at various levels, this is not the right opportunity for someone who is not ready to put in a good amount of work to better serve communities of color.
That being said, the workload is certainly manageable for busy professionals.
Participants will have 2.5 hours sessions each week for eight weeks and up to 4 hours of prep work outside of sessions. Readings and prep workload will fluctuate weekly.
“Each week through this experience— the readings, the videos, the learnings, the conversations, the really thought-provoking questions that everybody continues to ask— I’m actually taking them back to my team and I am facilitating conversations with the team and delivering some of the messages to really challenge us to think differently from the patient experience perspective on how we can engage differently with our stakeholders to bring some of these learnings and infuse it throughout the organization. This has been a life-changing experience for me. It really has forced me to think differently and do a lot of self-reflection on how I can be a different leader, and how I can engage differently within the community, within my organization, and then even at home with my kids. I thought that I was doing a good job but I’m scratching the surface. It needs to go so much deeper.” - The Proximity Project: Healthcare participant (2023)
“The way the group sessions were run (music, icebreakers promoting true vulnerability, dancing) changed my approach to events/meetings and made me think about "the way we do things" and ways to challenge that and create more welcoming environments.” - The Proximity Project participant (2022)
