EUROPEAN RACISM: "Unhealthy Bias" - Michael Brown And Eric Garner Protests Inspire Doctors To Confront Medical Racism!

March 4, 2015 - UNITED STATES - Racism affects the society in diverse ways, with medical care being one route of discrimination. Medical racism is real, but many people do not pay much attention to it, and those guilty of the practice may not even realize they are participating in it. Some medical professionals are calling for intensified efforts in fighting this unpleasant phenomenon in the medical community.

Two op-ed pieces in the February issue of the prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), call for improved and conscious efforts in addressing the issue of racism that has made total equality of races unrealizable within the health system.

The authors of the first op-ed draw on previous research that suggests a preference for White patients, albeit unconscious, among a good number of doctors. This unhealthy bias is capable of making these physicians spend less time tending to Black American patients, according to the two Chicago doctors. In fact, a report published by the Institute of Medicine mentioned that African-American patients got less-effective care than Whites in almost all the conditions that the study covered.

This shows that the quality of health care services available to African-Americans is impacted by racial bias. Medical racism is capable of discouraging blacks from seeking timely treatment, and this may account for why African-Americans suffer higher mortality from certain conditions, including cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. David Ansell, one of the doctors who prepared the op-ed, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the authors felt there was need to talk more about medical racism in light of protests following the recent police killings of two unarmed Black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

The second op-ed, written by New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, followed a somewhat similar path as the first. The author expresses the need for doctors to learn from the student activism seen in the protesting of the killings of Brown, Garner and other people of color.

“As a mother of Black children, I feel a personal urgency for society to acknowledge racism’s impact on the everyday lives of millions of people in the United States and elsewhere and to act to end discrimination,” Bassett writes. “As a doctor and New York City’s health commissioner, I believe that health professionals have much to contribute to that debate and process.”

Bassett, who has also previously written about health inequality, says more research needs to be conducted to shed more light on racial gaps present in health care. She also calls for a reform of structures that have ensured a low number of Black doctors and for the medical community to be more vocal about racism in the society. - Naturally Moi.

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