Racism and Public Health

Amid a new gold rush of health equity research funding, an influx of newcomers to the field are publishing “naive and uninformed, and sometimes racist, research and ‘erasing’ scholars of color” who built the discipline’s foundation.  

Sickle cell trait, which affects 1 in 13 Black Americans, is almost always benign.      Those who have the trait have only 1 of the genes necessary for sickle cell disease, which can be life threatening.

Racism has been intertwined with American psychiatry since the profession’s inception.  Now, the American Psychiatric Association aims to make amends. It issued a public apology in January, and its annual meeting last weekend centered on equity.  

The pandemic has made ‘social determinants of health’ a buzzy phrase and brought fresh grant money to study the century-old concept.   But thus far, research on the topic hasn’t translated to tangible solutions, which are politically fraught and incredibly complex.

When Boston’s Brigham and Women's Hospital dug into the details of COVID-19 deaths, it forced a reckoning with hospital policy.   For one, patients, often Latino, who spoke little or no English had a 35% greater chance of death. Also, lower-paid hospital workers getting…

Yesterday’s conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd delivered justice and a measure of relief for many.  But Black Americans who witness such violence through the news and social media endure lingering mental health…

Birth workers of color believe that growing their ranks could help improve outcomes for Black mothers and babies—but it’s also an access issue.  

Days after declaring racism a “serious public health threat,” the CDC released a pair of studies quantifying COVID-19’s disproportionate toll on America’s communities of color,

Horrific anti-Asian violence in the US during this pandemic is part of a long line of outbreaks fueling fear of the “other.”

The Tuskegee syphilis study—which deceived Black men into thinking they were being treated for “bad blood” when they really had untreated syphilis—is a ubiquitous part of the public narrative around minorities’ mistrust of the medical establishment.