Black doctors are calling for the U.S. health system to take action to reduce racial inequity in medical care for African Americans.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused disproportionate illness and death in the African American community. Blacks account for 22% of U.S. deaths from Covid-19, while making up 12.5% of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those national numbers are based onincluded racial identification of coronavirus victims.
"We need to start in the medical school. There need to be lectures on social determinants of health, lectures and training and study on implicit bias," said Harris, recalling her own course material when she trained to be a doctor. "When you learn about burns and rashes and skin diseases, they are described in white patients."
When it comes to cancer treatment, systemic racial issues can lead to higher mortality. More than 15 academic papers examiningfound that living in segregated Black communities is associated with later-stage diagnosis of breast and lung cancers, and lower survival rates. "If we approached health equity the way we do other major diseases, with a unified standard as to what we are prioritizing, how we are understanding the problem … and how we resolve it, I think we'll make a lot of progress," said Boyo.The National Medical Association, the largest organization of African American doctors, has decried police use of excessive force as a public-health issue and has called for anti-bias training for all U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Individual doctors have protested along with demonstrators, often taking a knee outside the same facilities where they care for patients with coronavirus.
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