Cultural Humility Conference
Cultural Humility Virtual Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS
Submissions Deadline: August 3, 2026
Lifelong learning ~ Self-reflection ~ Mutual partnerships ~ Institutional accountability
The NBASLH Cultural Humility Task Force invites you to submit a proposal for our 4th Annual Cultural Humility Conference. This year, we gather around a question that is both urgent and personal: What does it mean to truly support Black mothering, children, and communities, not only at birth, but across the fullness of life?
Our theme, Dear Mama: Honoring Black Mothering, Healing Our Communities, is an invitation to sit with that question together. The conference refers to "mothering" as a radical act. Grounded in the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs Revolutionary Mothering, we understand mothering not as a biological category, but as a practice: nurturing creativity, breaking cycles of exclusion, building belonging, and laboring with fierce compassion toward the next generation. In Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (Gumbs, 2016), mothering is understood as a practice of radical care that belongs to all who do the work, including Black fathers, queer and trans parents, grandmothers, aunties, chosen family, and birthing people. Mothering is an act of resistance.
Why Black Maternal Health, and Why Now?
Black maternal mortality in the United States remains one of the most visible and persistent indicators of structural racism. With a maternal mortality rate more than 2.5 times higher than that of white women, this is a justice issue. For speech-language practitioners and audiologists, the stakes are concrete: mother-infant bonding, early communication and hearing development, and feeding and swallowing are all shaped by the conditions in which Black mothers labor, recover, and parent.
But the crisis does not end at the birth event. Sustainable health and wellness for Black women and children depends on far more than surviving delivery. It requires food and nutritional security, safe living environments, access to education, and strong social support. Social drivers undergird health trajectories. Our field has a role across all of it.
Our Grounding Frameworks
This conference is rooted in cultural humility as described by Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998): a lifelong commitment to self-reflection, redressing power imbalances, and building mutually beneficial partnerships with communities. We take an intersectional approach, recognizing that reproductive and maternal experiences are shaped by race, gender, ability, and class. Loretta Ross' reproductive justice framework reminds us that reproductive violence is a direct infringement on human rights, and that our professional spaces are not neutral.
Proposals are welcomed for the following areas:
● Cultural humility in clinical practice with Black mothers and families
● Social determinants and drivers of health and health equity in SLHS and beyond
● Community-centered approaches to health equity and building mutually beneficial partnerships
● Institutional accountability, health equity, and policy
● Cultural humility and health equity in pedagogy, technology, and innovation
● Cultural humility and health equity in ethics and supervision
● Self-reflection, self-evaluation, and disrupting implicit biases in healthcare
● Open to additional topic areas that connect to the conference theme
The 4th Annual Cultural Humility Virtual Conference will take place via Zoom on October 3, 2026 from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. EST.
Before you begin the submission process, please take a moment to read through the Call for Papers submission guidelines.
Please note: presenter roles are volunteer-based and unpaid. We deeply value your expertise and your labor.
For more information, contact the Cultural Humility Task Force at [email protected]
Before you begin the submission process, please take a moment to read through the Call for Papers submission guidelines, click here.
For more information, contact the Cultural Humility Task Force at [email protected]
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