Activism Through Research
“Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.”
- Dr. Cornel West
The K Matters.
Ashley K. Parks
I am Ashley K. Parks, a Family Nurse Practitioner, educator, and researcher with over 18 years experience in healthcare and a PhD candidate studying population health and policy. My research emphasis is on stigma associated with cannabis use, marijuana policy reform, and public health implications of social and health equity. Witnessing a change in care from healthcare providers and stereotypical labeling once marijuana use is identified, systemic inequities, and damaging health practices that people of color experience, was conflicting with my philosophy of care and has motivated my activism through research to reduce disparities and inform health and public policy.
Black Women Equity
Black Family Health Policy
Social Determinants of Health
Population Health Cannabis
Reform Justice Compliance
Transforming lived experiences into evidence to advance health equity through advocacy, policy, and practice change.
When I interviewed for my master’s program, I was asked why I wanted to become a nurse practitioner. My response was to provide quality healthcare for Black people. Our communities don’t get the same level of care, benevolence, or altruism that members of other racial groups do when it comes to services, education, and resources. Further, I hold the Black woman to a place of reverence as origins of the Black family begin with her. I am a Black woman and I have been a consumer and medical provider of the interwoven system that diminishes her value and that of her family. My mission has evolved from one focused on clinical practice to the systems that dismantle Black families and support marginalization.
My research is to explore stigma associated with cannabis use, particularly for Black women and the policies and prohibition surrounding marijuana that has directly, indirectly, and disproportionately impacted communities of color most through the War on Drugs. Marginalized communities are exhausted with being the target of marijuana criminalization and incarceration while our enterprising counterparts capitalize off “legal” marijuana industrialization. Equitable programming at the federal, state, and local levels will help to balance that field of injustice.
Education &
Training
“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”
- Angela Davis
