Reframing Stigma as Social Death: Treating the Whole Patient

Think about the whole person. Are we addressing? Or are we, because we don’t have to be social workers, but are we thinking about how are we connecting them to the social needs that they may need to address? Do they have stable housing? Do they have access to a mental health provider? Is that on our treatment planning list so that we can keep up to date with it? I want to transition us from cultural competence to structural competence. Everybody’s worried about cultural competence which is necessary but not sufficient.

Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD
Associate Residency Program Director, Assistant Professor, and Addiction Psychiatrist, Yale University
As an undergraduate, Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD attended Hampton University, a historically Black university, where she became interested in basic science. After college, Dr. Jordan conducted HIV research at the National Institutes of Health, where she contemplated combining her love for basic science with the clinical sciences. In 2003, Dr. Jordan began an MD, PhD program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City. In medical school, Dr. Jordan became passionate about serving minority populations, specifically within psychiatry. She completed a general adult psychiatric residency at Yale University in 2015, where she served as Program-Wide Chief. During residency, Dr. Jordan became interested in treating patients with substance use disorders, given the intense stigma witnessed from other disciplines. As such, Dr. Jordan completed specialized training in Addiction Psychiatry at Yale. Currently, Dr. Jordan is an associate residency program director, assistant professor, and addiction psychiatrist at Yale University. She is a community-engaged researcher, focused on providing equitable mental health and addiction treatment and preventative services for historically marginalized populations. Her extensive research, educational, and clinical work has focused on increasing access to evidence-based substance use treatment for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) both nationally and abroad. Locally, she leads the Faith-based recovery project, Imani Breakthrough (Imani meaning faith in Swahili), held in 8 Black and Latinx churches throughout the state of Connecticut helping Black and Latinx individuals with addiction engage in treatment.