Racism in Healthcare & Science
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Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy:
Our Maternal Death Rates Are Only Bad if You Count Black Women
Vanity Fair, May 2022
Targeting the Uneven Burden of Kidney Disease on Black Americans
The New York Times, May 2022
Working with a doula can be life-changing for mothers of color
Crosscut, June 2022
FDA Takes Important Steps
to Increase Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Clinical Trials
FDA, April 2022
Can We Build Less
Biased Medical Bots?
Reasons to Be Cheerful, April 2022
Gaslighting of Black medical trainees makes residency
something to ‘survive’
STAT, March 2022
Organ Transplants Reached a Record High Last Year. Why Are Black Donors Still So Rare?
Capital B News, March 2022
North Columbia’s 29203
has high rate of diabetic amputations
The State, March 2022
Raising The Stakes To Advance Equity In Black Maternal Health
Health Affairs, March 2022
“Race norming” & the long legacy of medical racism, explained
Vox, July 2021
The Historical Roots of
Mistrust in Science
American Bar Association, June 2021
A Century After the Tulsa
Massacre, Inequities in Medical Infrastructure Drive Health Gap
The Wall Street Journal, May 2021
They Haven’t Gotten a Covid Vaccine Yet. But They Aren’t ‘Hesitant’ Either.
The New York Times, May 2021
Black Lives Are Shorter in Chicago. My Family’s History Shows Why.
The New York Times, April 2021
Black families at Seattle
Children’s face security at double
the rate of white families
Crosscut, April 2021
An Antiracist Agenda
for Medicine
Boston Review, April 2021
Health Disparities Hit
Rural Children of Color Hardest
Axios, April 2021
In Arizona, Birth Workers of
Color Fight For More Access
NPR, April 2021
Race, Policing, and History — Remembering the Freedom House Ambulance Service
New England Journal of Medicine, April 2021
Medical Racism has Shaped
U.S. Policies for Centuries
AAIHS, March 2021
Stop Blaming Tuskegee,
Critics Say. It's Not An 'Excuse'
For Current Medical Racism
NPR, March 2021
Black maternal health
omnibus package introduced by Democratic lawmakers
The Hill, Feb. 2021
Black Americans should
face lower age cutoffs to
qualify for a vaccine
Washington Post, Feb. 2021
White people are getting
vaccinated at higher rates than
Black and Latino Americans
CNN, Jan. 2021
Prisons have already failed to
contain Covid-19. What happens when the new variants arrive?
Vox, Jan. 2021
Seattle Children's doctor
forced to resign after
complaints of racism
Crosscut, Jan. 2021
Revered doctor steps down, accusing Seattle Children’s
Hospital of racism
Crosscut, Dec. 2020
Where Are All the
Black Doctors?
WebMD, Dec. 2020
Say her name: Dr. Susan Moore
The Washington Post, Dec. 2020
How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men
ProPublica, Dec. 2020
Descendants of Tuskegee Syphilis Study Survivors Say It Was Nothing Like the Covid-19 Vaccine
Zora, Dec. 2020
In U.S. Cities, The Health Effects
of Past Housing Discrimination
Are Plain to See
NPR, Nov. 2020
Black Ambulance Pioneers
99% Invisible, July 2020
The Black American
Amputation Epidemic
ProPublica, May 2020
Eliminating Racial Disparities
in Maternal and Infant Mortality
Center for American Progress, May 2020
How we fail black patients in pain
AAMC, Jan. 2020
Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed
by doctors today.
The NYT Magazine, Aug. 2019
A Preventable Cancer
is on the Rise in Alabama
The New Yorker, April 2018
A Why Are Black
Women Dying
UW Medicine, 2018
Black Women & Childbirth
NPR, Dec. 2017
America's Health
Segregation Problem
The Atlantic, May 2016
A Prescription for
More Black Doctors
NYT Magazine, Sept. 2015
For Black parents, barriers to postpartum mental health care begin before the first call for help
The 19th, August 2021
Seattle Children’s releases
few details from completed investigation into systemic racism
The Seattle Times, July 2021
Tulane School of Medicine
placed on probation by
accreditor amid allegations of racism, lack of diversity
The Lens, July 2021
Negative descriptors are more
likely to appear in health records
of Black patients, study finds
STAT, Jan. 2022
He Was Shot by a Stranger
but Treated Like a Criminal
When He Reached the ER
Time, Oct. 2021
Why Many Black Americans Changed Their Minds About
Covid Shots
The New York Times, Oct. 2021
How Abolition of Race-Based Medicine Is Necessary to
American Health Justice
AMA Journal of Ethics, March 2022
Memorializing a
Medical Predator
The Forum, Jan. 2022
Cervical cancer kills Black
women at a disproportionately higher rate than whites
NPR, Jan. 2022
Books
Please buy from a black-owned bookstore (click here for a list), your local independent bookstore, or from the Bookshop link provided.
Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War & Reconstruction
Jim Downs, 2015
Medical Apartheid: The
Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Harriet Washington 2008
Watch
The Origin of Everything
Health Disparities in the Black
Community: Past & Present (12 mins)
Racism's corrosive impact on
the health of Black Americans
60 Minutes (13 mins)
Listen
Beyond the White Coat
Multiple episodes discussing racial
disparities in healthcare.
Backstory June
A History of Racial Disparity in Healthcare
June 2020 (58 mins.)
Black Cancer
Black Cancer explores the cancer journeys
of everyday people of color. Host Jodi-Ann Burey weaves a narrative about race, health, and life and helps listeners discover the wisdom trauma can bring.
Black History Year
What You Need To Know About Medical Racism with Harriet Washington (38 minutes)
Decolonizing Science
NPR
In Tuskegee, Painful History Shadows
Efforts To Vaccinate African Americans
(8 mins.)
WHYY
3000 by 2000: A history of the
visionary campaign to diversify
med schools, and what got in its way
(11 mins.)
Additional Resources
Advancing
Health Equity
Association of American
Medical Colleges
Racism and Health:
a Reading List
Association of Black
Women Physicians
Black in
Microbiology
Black Doc Village
Black Mamas
Matter Alliance
Black Men in
White Coats
Black Perspectives
Syllabus: A History of Anti-Black Racism in Medicine
Black Women’s
Health Imperative
COVID Racial Data
Tracker
Decolonizing
Science
Doctor for a Day
GirlTrek
National Birth
Equity Collaborative
National Black Leadership
Commission on Health
Surge Reproductive Justice
Articles
Criminalizing Abortion Will
Hurt Black Women Most
The Washington Post, June 2022
Some Black abortion providers
are considering leaving the field
for fear of prosecution
NBC News, June 2022
Philadelphia created American obstetrics. Black women were exploited from the start.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 2022