Laina Bay-Cheng will join the Minority Health Disparities Initiative at 1 p.m. Oct. 5 via Zoom, for the inaugural Health Equity Grand Rounds event.

Bay-Cheng will give a talk on “Capable of Risk: Sexual Vulnerability and Dignity in the Sexual Lives of Marginalized Youth.”

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

The presentation will explore how concerns about youth sexual health are well-founded, but often misdirected. To be understood and reduced, adverse sexual outcomes must be understood as manifestations of interlocked forms of injustice. Racism, sexism, cishetsexism, adultism and/or economic precarity combine to expose marginalized youth to disproportionate and avoidable danger, compel them toward sexual behaviors and relationships regardless of safety or wantedness, and to deprive them of resources to reduce or remedy adverse consequences.

Moreover, social injustice not only puts marginalized youth at risk, it also keeps them from risk, curbing their basic rights and capabilities. Using Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach as a framework, Bay-Cheng will demonstrate that youth sexual vulnerability can be stemmed and youth sexual dignity upheld through practical steps toward social justice.

Bay-Cheng, Ph.D., joined York University as its first associate vice president, faculty affairs in August 2022. Prior to that, she was on faculty at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work for seventeen years, serving as doctoral program director and then associate dean for faculty development. Her research concentrates on the impact of interlocked social injustices — namely misogyny, racism, economic injustice and age-based oppression on young people’s sexual lives.