African Indigenous Medical Knowledge and Human Health by
Despite the relevance of and empirical evidence for African Traditional Medicine, based on African Indigenous Medical Knowledge (AIMK), research and development of new phytomedicines from this continent has been slow. African Indigenous Medical Knowledge and Human Health aims to provide a catalyst for health innovations based on the rich African biodiversity and AIMK. The book documents some of the success stories from the continent related to AIMK and serves as a one-step reference for all professionals interested in the research and development of medical interventions - including pharmacognosists, ethnobiologists, botanists, phytochemists, pharmacologists and medical scientists.
African Traditional Medicine: Autonomy and Informed Consent by
This book focuses on informed consent in African Traditional Medicine (ATM). ATM forms a large portion of the healthcare systems in Africa. WHO statistics show that as much as 80% of the population in Africa uses traditional medicine for primary health care. With such a large constituency, it follows that ATM and its practices should receive more attention in bioethics.nbsp;By comparing the ethics of care approach with the ATM approach to Relational Autonomy In Consent (RAIC), the authorsnbsp;argue that the ATM focus on consent based on consensus constitutes a legitimate informed consent. This booknbsp;is distinctive insofar as it employs the ethics of care as a hermeneutic to interpret ATM. The analysis examines the ethics of care movement in Western bioethics to explore its relational approach to informed consent.nbsp;Additionally,nbsp;thisnbsp;is the first known study that discusses healthcare ethics committees in ATM.
Algorithms of oppression : how search engines reinforce racism by
In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color.Through an analysis of textual and media searches as well as extensive research on paid online advertising, Noble exposes a culture of racism and sexism in the way discoverability is created online.
An American Crisis by
Black men are increasingly underrepresented in medical schools and in the medical profession. A diverse workforce is a key attribute of quality healthcare and research suggests that a diverse workforce may help to advance cultural competency and increase access to high-quality health care, especially for underserved populations. Conversely, lack of diversity in the health workforce threatens health care quality and access and contributes to health disparities. In this way, the growing absence of Black men in medicine is especially troubling, because their absence in medicine may have adverse consequences for health care access, quality, and outcomes among Black Americans and Americans overall. To better understand the factors that contribute to the low participation of Black men in the medical profession, facilitate discussion of current strategies used to increase their participation in medical education, and explore new strategies along the educational and professional pipeline that may have potential to increase participation in medicine, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Cobb Institute jointly convened a 2-day workshop in November 2017, in Washington, DC. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare by
This book explores the ethical problems of algorithmic bias and its potential impact on populations that experience health disparities by examining the historical underpinnings of explicit and implicit bias, the influence of the social determinants of health, and the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in data. Over the last twenty-five years, the diagnosis and treatment of disease have advanced at breakneck speeds. Currently, we have technologies that have revolutionized the practice of medicine, such as telemedicine, precision medicine, big data, and AI. These technologies, especially AI, promise to improve the quality of patient care, lower health care costs, improve patient treatment outcomes, and decrease patient mortality. AI may also be a tool that reduces health disparities; however, algorithmic bias may impede its success. This book explores the risks of using AI in the context of health disparities. It is of interest to health services researchers,ethicists, policy analysts, social scientists, health disparities researchers, and AI policy makers.
Black and Blue by
Black & Blue is the first systematic description of how American doctors think about racial differences and how this kind of thinking affects the treatment of their black patients. The standard studies of medical racism examine past medical abuses of black people and do not address the racially motivated thinking and behaviors of physicians practicing medicine today. Black & Blue penetrates the physician's private sphere where racial fantasies and misinformation distort diagnoses and treatments. Doctors have always absorbed the racial stereotypes and folkloric beliefs about racial differences that permeate the general population. Within the world of medicine this racial folklore has infiltrated all of the medical sub-disciplines, from cardiology to gynecology to psychiatry. Doctors have thus imposed white or black racial identities upon every organ system of the human body, along with racial interpretations of black children, the black elderly, the black athlete, black musicality, black pain thresholds, and other aspects of black minds and bodies. The American medical establishment does not readily absorb either historical or current information about medical racism. For this reason, racial enlightenment will not reach medical schools until the current race-aversive curricula include new historical and sociological perspectives.
Black LGBT Health in the United States by
Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation focuses on the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of health, and considers both risk and resiliency factors for the Black LGBT population. Contributors to this collection intimately understand the associations between health and intersectional anti-Black racism, heterosexism, homonegativity, biphobia, transphobia, and social class. This collection fills a gap in current scholarship by providing information about an array of health issues like cancer, juvenile incarceration, and depression that affect all subpopulations of Black LGBT people, especially Black bisexual-identified women, Black bisexual-identified men, and Black transgender men. This book is recommended for readers interested in psychology, health, gender studies, race studies, social work, and sociology.
Black Man in a White Coat by
One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans. When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites." Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
Cancer Health Equity Research by
Cancer Health Equity Research, Volume 146 in the Advances in Cancer Research series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on a variety of timely topics, including Pubertal Mammary Development as a 'Susceptibility Window' for Breast Cancer Disparity, Review of Patient Navigation Interventions to Address Barriers to Participation in Cancer Clinical Trials, Racial Disparities in Ovarian Cancer Research, Mighty Men: A Faith-Based Weight Loss Intervention to Reduce Cancer Risk in African American Men, Design of a Patient Navigation Intervention to Increase Rates of Surgery among African Americans with Early-Stage Lung Cancer, and much. Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors Presents the latest release in the Advances in Cancer Research series Updated release includes the latest information on the Cancer Health Equity Research
Doctoring Freedom by
For enslaved and newly freed African Americans, attaining freedom and citizenship without health for themselves and their families would have been an empty victory. Even before emancipation, African Americans recognized that control of their bodies was a critical battleground in their struggle for autonomy, and they devised strategies to retain at least some of that control. In Doctoring Freedom, Gretchen Long tells the stories of African Americans who fought for access to both medical care and medical education, showing the important relationship between medical practice and political identity. Working closely with antebellum medical journals, planters' diaries, agricultural publications, letters from wounded African American soldiers, WPA narratives, and military and Freedmen's Bureau reports, Long traces African Americans' political acts to secure medical care: their organizing mutual-aid societies, their petitions to the federal government, and, as a last resort, their founding of their own medical schools, hospitals, and professional organizations. She also illuminates work of the earliest generation of black physicians, whose adult lives spanned both slavery and freedom. For African Americans, Long argues, claiming rights as both patients and practitioners was a political and highly charged act in both slavery and emancipation.
Dying in the City of the Blues by Fatal Invention by
An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes. This groundbreaking book by legal scholar and social critic Dorothy Roberts examines how the myth of race as a biological concept--revived by purportedly cutting-edge science, race-specific drugs, genetic testing, and DNA databases--continues to undermine a just society and promote inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Named one of the ten best black nonfiction books 2011 by AFRO.com, Fatal Invention offers a timely and "provocative analysis" (Nature) of race, science, and politics that "is consistently lucid . . . alarming but not alarmist, controversial but evidential, impassioned but rational" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). "Everyone concerned about social justice in America should read this powerful book." --Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union "A terribly important book on how the 'fatal invention' has terrifying effects in the post-genomic, 'post-racial' era." --Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, professor of sociology, Duke University, and author of Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States "Fatal Invention is a triumph! Race has always been an ill-defined amalgam of medical and cultural bias, thinly overlaid with the trappings of contemporary scientific thought. And no one has peeled back the layers of assumption and deception as lucidly as Dorothy Roberts." --Harriet A. Washington, author of and Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself
Flatlining by
What happens to black health care professionals in the new economy, where work is insecure and organizational resources are scarce? In Flatlining, Adia Harvey Wingfield exposes how hospitals, clinics, and other institutions participate in "racial outsourcing," relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians, and physician assistants to do "equity work"--extra labor that makes organizations and their services more accessible to communities of color. Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today's workplaces and communities.
Framing the dialogue on race and ethnicity to advance health equity : proceedings of a workshop by The Good Doctors by
The untold story of the courageous doctors and nurses who fought the battle for racial justice in hospitals, in clinics, and on the streets in the 1960s. The Medical Committee for Human Rights was organized in the summer of 1964 by medical professionals, mostly white and Northern, to provide care and support for Civil Rights activists who were organizing black voters in Mississippi. They left their lives and lucrative private practices to march beside and tend the wounds of demonstrators from Freedom Summer, to the March on Selma, to the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968. Galvanized, and sometimes radicalized, by their firsthand view of disenfranchised communities, the MCHR soon expanded its mission to encompass a range of causes from poverty to the war in Vietnam, and later took on the whole of the United States healthcare system. The MCHR doctors soon realized that fighting segregation would mean not just caring for white volunteers, but exposing and correcting the shocking inequalities in segregated health care. They pioneered community health plans and brought medical care to underserved, or unserved, areas. Though education was the most famous battleground for integration, the appaling injustice of segregated health care had equally devastating consequences. Award-winning historian John Dittmer, author of the classic Civil Rights history Local People, has written an insightful and moving account of a group of idealists who put their careers in the service of the belief, stated in their motto, that "Health Care Is a Human Right."
Health, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion by
"Unlike other books on this topic, the second edition will continue to focus primarily on the social justice issues associated with health disparities with an aim towards solutions. The new edition, like its predecessor, with a focus on racial and ethnic emerging majorities, will acknowledge that health disparities persist but provide insight as to why, with an emphasis on how to remedy the problems rather than just research and converse about it. The book's aim is to help people identify how students, academics, communities, health professionals and beyond can contribute to the resolution of the problems that are linked to health disparities"--Provided by publisher
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent.
Inclusion by
With Inclusion, Steven Epstein argues that strategies to achieve diversity in medical research mask deeper problems, ones that might require a different approach and different solutions. Formal concern with this issue, Epstein shows, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the mid-1980s, scientists often studied groups of white, middle-aged men--and assumed that conclusions drawn from studying them would apply to the rest of the population. But struggles involving advocacy groups, experts, and Congress led to reforms that forced researchers to diversify the population from which they drew for clinical research. While the prominence of these inclusive practices has offered hope to traditionally underserved groups, Epstein argues that it has drawn attention away from the tremendous inequalities in health that are rooted not in biology but in society. "Epstein's use of theory to demonstrate how public policies in the health profession are shaped makes this book relevant for many academic disciplines. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice "A masterful comprehensive overview of a wide terrain."--Troy Duster, Biosocieties
Invisible Visits by
Although the United States spends almost one-fifth of all its resources funding healthcare, the American system continues to be dogged by persistent inequities in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and women. Invisible Visits analyzes how middle-class Black women navigate thecomplexities of dealing with doctors in this environment. It challenges the idea that race and gender discrimination - particularly in healthcare settings - is a thing of the past, and questions the persistent myth that discrimination only affects poor racial minorities. In so doing, the bookexpands our understanding of how Black middle-class women are treated when they go to the doctor, why they continue to face inequities in securing proper medical care, and what strategies they use to fight for the best treatment (as well as the consequential toll on their health).Based on original research, the author shines a light on how women perceive the persistently negative stereotypes that follow them into the exam room, and proceeds to illustrate that simply providing more cultural-competency or anti-bias training to doctors will not be enough to overcome theproblem. For Americans to truly address these challenges, the deeply embedded discrimination in our prized institutions - including those in the healthcare sector - must be acknowledged.
Issues in Health and Health Care Related to Race/Ethnicity, Immigration, Ses and Gender by
The 30th Anniversary volume of Research in the Sociology of Health Care looks at the important links between major social factors and health and health care. The four main factors examined in the book are race/ethnicity, immigration, Socioeconomic Status (SES) and gender. Starting with an introductory chapter which reviews some of the important sociological literature on these social factors as linked to health, the book goes on to cover various key issues, including obesity, ageing, immigration and racial segregation.
Joycelyn Elders, M. D. by
"The oldest of eight children, Joycelyn Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones in the tiny town of Schaal, Arkansas, in 1933. She grew up in a three-room cabin and, at age fifteen, graduated from high school as valedictorian. When she entered Philander Smith College in Little Rock, she had never seen a doctor, let alone dreamed of becoming one." "Dr. Elders graduated from the University of Arkansas Medical School and then became its first black resident, its first black chief resident, and finally its first black professor. By the time of the Senate debate on her confirmation as surgeon general in August 1993, Dr. Elders had been a respected pediatric endocrinologist and medical scientist for a quarter of a century, as well as the director of Arkansas's health department under then-governor Clinton." "But during Dr. Elders's tenure as surgeon general she came under fire for her controversial positions on such subjects as abortion, sex education, the distribution of condoms, and the legalization of drugs. Her passion and outspokenness enraged Republicans and often upset the Clinton administration. Now, Dr. Elders openly describes the top-level machinations that led the Clinton health insurance reform to self-destruct and eventually resulted in her own dismissal. She writes with equal candor about such intimate personal tragedies as her youngest son's drug addiction and arrest, and about the poisoned political climate in Arkansas, which has affected the lives of so many of the President's friends and appointees."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Legacy by
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "This book is more than a memoir--it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women." --Essence One of NPR's 11 Books to Look Forward to in 2024 One of Good Morning America's 15 New Books to Read for the New Year "Legacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a force of nature." --Abraham Verghese, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Covenant of Water "[An] extraordinary family story." --Dr. Damon Tweedy, The New York Times Book Review "This book should be required reading for all medical students." --Gayle King, CBS Mornings The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives. What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child--or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother's footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school--were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face. Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock's odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician--to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Medical Bondage by
The accomplishments of pioneering doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental caesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. Medical Bondage breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as "medical superbodies" highly suited for medical experimentation. In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white "ladies." Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors were legitimizing, for decades to come, groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities. Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. It also retells the story of black enslaved women and of Irish immigrant women from the perspective of these exploited groups and thus restores for us a picture of their lives.
Necessary Conversations by
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Necessary Conversations: Understanding Racism as a Barrier to Achieving Health Equity reflects the conviction that a true prioritization of health in our communities is impossible without a commitment to racial equity. Drawing on the pivotal social events of 2020 in America, it extends a powerfulcall to action based on a growing body of evidence that racism is the underlying cause of so many poor health outcomes. Contributors across health, education, law, and media further the longstanding work of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create a "Culture of Health" by engaging in authenticdiscussions about the systems and structures that harm people of color and offering provocative ideas and strategies to inspire action.Necessary Conversations ultimately highlights the importance of building leadership and partnerships through those who are most affected in the community. It considers what it would take to overhaul institutions that treat people differently on the basis of race and recognizes that we all must shareresources and join together to support the advancement of health and racial equity.
Seeing Patients by
"A powerful and extraordinarily important book." --James P. Comer, MD "A marvelous personal journey that illuminates what it means to care for people of all races, religions, and cultures. The story of this man becomes the aspiration of all those who seek to minister not only to the body but also to the soul." --Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think Growing up in Jim Crow-era Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. While race relations have changed dramatically since then, old ways of thinking die hard. In this blend of memoir and manifesto, Dr. White draws on his experience as a resident at Stanford Medical School, a combat surgeon in Vietnam, and head orthopedic surgeon at one of Harvard's top teaching hospitals to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical care, and to explore how we can do better in a diverse twenty-first-century America. "Gus White is many things--trailblazing physician, gifted surgeon, and freedom fighter. Seeing Patients demonstrates to the world what many of us already knew--that he is also a compelling storyteller. This powerful memoir weaves personal experience and scientific research to reveal how the enduring legacy of social inequality shapes America's medical field. For medical practitioners and patients alike, Dr. White offers both diagnosis and prescription." --Jonathan L. Walton, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Harvard University "A tour de force--a compelling story about race, health, and conquering inequality in medical care...Dr. White has a uniquely perceptive lens with which to see and understand unconscious bias in health care...His journey is so absorbing that you will not be able to put this book down." --Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., author of All Deliberate Speed
Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired by
Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired moves beyond the depiction of African Americans as mere recipients of aid or as victims of neglect and highlights the ways black health activists created public health programs and influenced public policy at every opportunity. Smith also sheds new light on the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment by situating it within the context of black public health activity, reminding us that public health work had oppressive as well as progressive consequences.
Social Determinants and Inequities in Health for Black Canadians by
"The following snapshot aims to highlight how Anti-Black
racism and systemic discrimination are key drivers of health
inequalities faced by diverse Black Canadian communities.I
Evidence of institutional discrimination in key determinants
of health is also presented, including education, income,
and housing. Finally, national data is shared demonstrating
inequalities in health outcomes and determinants of health.
Readers are invited to reflect on how racism and discrimination
may contribute to these inequalities."
Surviving in the Hour of Darkness: the Health and Wellness of Women of Colour and Indigenous Women by
There is growing evidence that the experience of racial discrimination can have a pervasive and devastating impact on the health and well-being of Black women, First Nations women and women of colour. The essays collected in this anthology demonstrate the gender, religious, cultural and class background strongly influence how we experience illness and how we are treated within the health care system. The book illustrates through both critical and personal testimonials that importance of these factors to the health and well-being of women in these groups.
Taylor and Kelly's Dermatology for Skin of Color 2/e by
Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. The highly anticipated update of the complete textbook of dermatologic science and practice focusing on the care of patients with moderately to heavily pigmented skin - 21 new chapters with more than 900 photographs! Dermatology for Skin of Color, Second Edition is a comprehensive reference that thoroughly details every aspect of dermatologic science as it applies to skin of color - from the development of the skin to the biology of hair and nails. All commonly encountered dermatologic problems of Africans, Asians, Arabs, Native Americans, and other peoples are covered, as are other diseases with significant skin manifestations. This second edition is significantly expanded with 21 new chapters covering dermatology for geriatric, adolescent, and pregnant patients, as well as depigmenting agents, viral infections, cutaneous manifestation of internal malignancy, neurofibromatosis, tuberous sclerosis, photoaging, photosensivity, laser treatment for skin-tightening, toxins and fillers, cosmetic practices in Mexico, effects of tattooing and piercing, sickle cell disease, drug eruptions, and the biology of oral mucosa. It also features many more clinical pictures and improved organization. Extensively illustrated with more than 900 full-color photos, Dermatology for Skin of Color provides comprehensive coverage of medical, surgical, and cosmetic treatment options, pediatric dermatology, differences between skin of color and Caucasian skin, differences between ethnic groups with skin of color, and important basic science information on the structure and function of skin of color. In addition, folk remedies and over-the-counter treatments specifically targeting this population are covered.
Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men by
For forty years, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male passively monitored hundreds of adult black males with syphilis despite the availability of effective treatment. The study’s methods have become synonymous with exploitation and mistreatment by the medical profession. To identify the study’s effects on the behavior and health of older black men, we use an interacted difference-in-difference-in-differences model, comparing older black men to other demographic groups, before and after the Tuskegee revelation, in varying proximity to the study’s victims. We find that the disclosure of the study in 1972 is correlated with increases in medical mistrust and mortality and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older black men. Our estimates imply life expectancy at age 45 for black men fell by up to 1.5 years in response to the disclosure, accounting for approximately 35% of the 1980 life expectancy gap between black and white men and 25% of the gap between black men and women.
Twice As Hard by
Black women physicians' stories have gone untold for far too long, leaving gaping holes in American medical history, in women's history, and in black history. It's time to set the record straight No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school. Brown champions these black women physicians, including the stories of: · Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, who graduated from medical school only fourteen months after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and provided medical care for the newly freed slaves who had been neglected and exploited by the medical system. · Dr. Edith Irby Jones, the first African American to attend a previously white-only medical school in the Jim Crow South, where she was not allowed to eat lunch with her classmates or use the women's bathroom. Still, Dr. Irby Jones persisted and graduated from medical school, going on to directly inspire other black women to pursue medicine such as . . . · Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who, after meeting Dr. Irby Jones, changed her career ambitions from becoming a Dillard's salesclerk to becoming a doctor. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Elders as the US surgeon general, making her the first African American and second woman to hold this position. Brown tells the stories of these doctors from the perspective of a black woman in medicine. Her journey as a medical student already has parallels to those of black women who entered medicine generations before her. What she uncovers about these women's struggles, their need to work twice as hard and be twice as good, and their ultimate success serves as instruction and inspiration for new generations considering a career in medicine or science.
Unequal Cities by
Across the United States, Black people have shorter life expectancies than white people--reflecting structural racism and deep-rooted drivers of population health. But are some cities more equal than others? The elimination of racial and ethnic inequities--differences that are avoidable, unnecessary, and unfair--has been one of the overarching health-related goals of the United States for decades. Yet dramatic differences in health outcomes between Black people and white people persist, rooted in structural and social determinants of health. Nationally, a Black baby can expect to live four years less than a white baby. But mortality outcomes and inequities vary widely across cities. In Washington, DC, for example, the average life expectancy for Blacks is twelve years less than that of whites. But in other cities, mortality differences between races are less striking or nonexistent. If health equity can be achieved in some cities, why not all? This is arguably the most important health equity issue of our time. In Unequal Cities, Maureen R. Benjamins and Fernando G. De Maio gather a team of experts to explore these racial inequities, as well as the ten-year gap in life expectancy between our healthiest and unhealthiest big cities. Rigorous analyses give readers access to previously unavailable data on life expectancy, mortality from leading causes of death, and related Black-white inequities for the country's 30 biggest cities. The theoretically grounded essays also explore how characteristics of cities, including their levels of income inequality and racial segregation, impact overall health and Black-white inequities. The first book to specifically examine racial health inequities within and across US cities, Unequal Citiesoffers a social justice framework for addressing the newly identified inequities, as well as specific case studies to help public health advocates, civic leaders, and other stakeholders envision the steps needed to improve their cities' current health outcomes and achieve racial equity. A powerful call to action for health equity advocates and city leaders alike, this book is essential reading. Contributors: David Ansell, Darlene Oliver Hightower, Jana Hirschtick, Sharon Homan, Ayesha Jaco, Emily LaFlamme, Brittney S. Lange-Maia, Kristin Monnard, Nikhil G. Prachand, Pamela T. Roesch, Michael Rozier, Nazia Saiyed, Eve Shapiro, Abigail Silva, Veenu Verma, the West Side United Metrics Working Group, Ruqaiijah Yearby
Writing Blackgirls' and Women's Health Science by
This field of Black girls' and women's health (BGWH) science is both transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary. As such, the contributors to this edited collection offer a unique lens to BGWH science, expanding our collective scientific worldviews. The contributing authors draw upon their ontological and epistemological knowledge to formulate pathways and inform methodologies for doing research and praxis to address BGWH. Each contributor draws upon these knowledges and offers the reader a way to better understand how their framing and writing can create change in the health of Black girls and women.
Cancer Health Disparities by
Despite improvements in strategies for early detection and cancer treatment, racial and ethnic groups and individuals from other medically underserved populations continue to experience disparities in cancer morbidity and mortality. Research in cancer health disparities has evolved from first generation studies that described racial differences in morbidity and mortality to research that examines the efforts of interventions that focus on increasing access to early detection and treatment. As a result of these efforts, racial background, socioeconomic characteristics, access to high quality cancer care, and psychological and social factors have been documented as important determinants of cancer health disparities; these factors provide the context within which cancer is detected, treated, and prevented. The field of cancer health disparities is now at a critical juncture where it is essential to move beyond descriptive information on determinants of disparities in cancer morbidity and mortality to translational studies that examine basic biological processes and how these processes interact with social, psychological, and behavioral factors to contribute to disparities in cancer risk and outcomes. Empirical evidence about the influence of multilevel determinants has grown, and now, more than ever, efforts are being made to understand the independent and interactive effects of biological, psychological, behavioral, and social determinants of cancer health disparities and to translate this information into sustainable interventions for cancer prevention, control, and treatment. Provides an in-depth examination of emerging evidence about multilevel determinants of cancer health disparities Describes novel frameworks and approaches that are being used to understand and address cancer health disparities Presents evidence-based interventions that have potential to achieve equity in cancer outcomes Reviews the effects of previous and ongoing approaches to address disparities
