Anti-Racism in Health Care

Scholars and antiracism activists, Drs. Rhea Boyd and Rachel Hardeman, discuss the meaning of structural racism, the health impacts of police violence, the “say her name” movement, and the ways we can ensure our country’s current antiracist movement grows beyond a moment.

Dr. Andrea Deyrup breaks [race-based diagnoses] down for us, and unpacks the problems she sees with practicing race-based medicine, from delayed diagnoses to ignoring environmental factors that lead to different health outcomes. She says that while race-based health disparities are very real, the idea that our bodies are genetically different based on race is simply not.

Filipinos make up a small fraction of the nurses in the United States, but almost a third of the nurses who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. have been of Filipino descent. So what exactly is going on? Our friends over at The Atlantic and WNYC tried to understand more about this troubling statistic by telling the story of one woman: Rosary Castro-Olega.

Dr. Uché Blackstock was one of the first doctors to raise the alarm that COVID-19 was disproportionately impacting Black people. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about how medical schools contribute to inequities in health care, and what we can do about it.