Race, Gender & Health

Kendi IX. What the Racial Data ShowThe pandemic seems to be hitting people of color the hardest. The Atlantic. 2020. Publisher's VersionAbstract

I dread every time my partner leaves our home. I dread every time Sadiqa marches to the front lines of the war against COVID-19—the emergency department. I dread every time she comes home and removes her personal protective equipment.

Sadiqa is worried like a soldier in a total war, seeing so many medical providers going down, seeing so many patients going down. I am worried about her health—and my own, as someone surviving metastatic cancer. I am worried about all medical providers, all Americans who have compromised immune systems, all Americans who are infected, all Americans who are healthy and want to remain that way.

Frakt A. Race and Medicine: The Harm That Comes From Mistrust; The New Health Care. The New York Times. 2020.Abstract

Racial bias still affects many aspects of health care.

Racial discrimination has shaped so many American institutions that perhaps it should be no surprise that health care is among them. Put simply, people of color   receive less care — and often worse care — than white Americans.
Reasons includes lower rates of health coverage; communication barriers; and racial stereotyping based on false beliefs.

Predictably, their health outcomes are worse than those of whites.More

Ungar L. Not Yesterday’s Cocaine: Death Toll Rising From Tainted DrugBy Laura UngarNOVEMBER 25, 2019 REPUBLISH THIS STORY DISPONIBLE EN ESPAÑOL . Kaiser Health News. 2019. Publisher's VersionAbstract

CINCINNATI — A pain pill prescription for nerve damage revived Gwendolyn Barton’s long-dormant addiction last year, awakening fears she would slip back into smoking crack cocaine.

She’d done that drug and others for about 20 years before getting sober in 2008. But things were different back then. 

Boswell B, Zimitri Erasmus, Johannes S, and Ratele SMK. Racist Science: The Burden of Black Bodies and Minds. The Thinker: A Pan-African Quarterly for Thought Leaders. 2019;81 :4-8. Publisher's VersionAbstract

The point of our objection is
that this study draws on a racist
epistemological frame despite
centuries of Black radical
anticolonial activism and scholarship
produced in opposition to these
framings. The implications of this
study are that Black women bear
the burden of its findings, while
Black knowledges are debased
and erased.

Vincent Damotte1, Chao Zhao1 CL2 EW3 YL5 AM3 RK3 MMD4 5 4 4. Multiple Measures Reveal The Value of Both Race And GeographicAncestry For Self-Identification. bioRxiv. 2019. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Abstract
There is long-standing tension regarding whether and how to use race or geographic ancestry in biomedical research. We examined multiple self-reported measures of race and ancestry from a cohort of over 100,000 U.S. residents alongside genetic data. We found that these measures are often non-overlapping, and that no single self-reported measure alone provides a better fit to genetic ancestry than a combination including both race and geographic ancestry. We also found that patterns of reporting for race and ancestry appear to be influenced by participation in direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing. Our results demonstrate that there is a place for the language of both race and geographic ancestry as we seek to empower individuals to fully describe their family history in research and medicine.

One Sentence Summary Self-identification in the United States according to both racial and geographic terms best reflects genetic ancestry in individuals.