Do You Really Know Me? Effectively Addressing Cultural Diversity and Social Justice in Clinical Practice

Barbara C Wallace, Ph.D. is a New York state licensed psychologist and professor at Teachers College, Columbia University with three decades of experience treating diverse clients, and teaching cultural diversity, social justice, and multicultural competence to graduate-level professionals in-training and varied practitioners via advanced seminars. Dr. Wallace provides vital leadership within the Department of Health and Behavior Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University as a: Director of the Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education and tenured Professor; Director of Fieldwork for the Program in Community Health Education; Founding Director of the Research Group on Disparities in Health (RGDH) and the 2021 offshoot known as the ACTION Group on Racism and Oppression as a Public Health Crisis; and, Co-Director of the Center for Health Equity and Urban Science Education (CHEUSE), while serving as the Director of Health Equity for CHEUSE.As a renowned scholar and researcher, Dr. Wallace has been honored for her outstanding and unusual contributions to the field of psychology with the status of Fellow by the American Psychological Association within both Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race) and Division 50 (Society of Addiction Psychology). Her body of work is distinct for her original approach to cultural diversity, social justice, and multicultural competence training. Her expertise in this area has allowed her to provide regional, national, and global training to audiences for three decades. In support of this work, she has published 9 academic books, while her current training with Professional Psych Seminars on Transformational Training in Cultural Diversity and Social Justice shares content from a forthcoming book in progress. From among her more than 100 other print publications, there are chapters in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journal articles, including many lauded for their focus on: cultural diversity, cultural humility, cultural competence, multicultural competence, cultural sensitivity, multicultural sensitivity, cultural appropriateness, social justice, systemic racism and oppression, and equity for all; understanding intersectionality; the need for a practical coping skills approach for racial-cultural skill acquisition; and culturally tailored approaches to working with varied populations—including Black, Indigenous and People of Color, people with disabilities, women, and LGBTQ+ populations. In addition, Dr. Wallace has published to date 39 e-health products online (e.g. YouTube) with fellows of her Research Group on Disparities Health (RGDH) at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has pioneered an original RGDH brand of e-health interventions and products. The RGDH brand is distinguished by involving the design, dissemination and evaluation of culturally tailored websites and avatar/cartoon videos reflecting her public health informatics mission; and, using e-health to address topics as varied as HIV prevention, sexually transmitted infections, healthy eating behavior, dental health, HPV vaccination, reproductive health, prostate cancer, asthma, and COVID-19 prevention. In the process, the RGDH has advanced a new paradigm for e-health design, being rooted in a body of collaborative quantitative and qualitative research with her RGDH fellows, as well as her own health equity scholarship.
Dr. Wallace was the first African American woman to move through the ranks and gain tenure in the 100-year history of Teachers College, Columbia University in Morningside Heights, doing so in 1994. Further, she has made history at the college for graduating the largest cohorts of diverse doctoral students from underrepresented groups and around the globe; and, in general, has graduated more doctoral students, overall, than any other faculty primary sponsor of doctoral dissertations at the college in the past 20 years.
Finally, Dr. Wallace is also a visual artist and poet. As a graduate of Princeton University, her oil paintings of landscape scenes from Central Park, New York City, and other metaphysical imagery were featured at the Lewis Arts Complex, Princeton, NJ in October 2019.