Just Medicine 37. The trailblazing Black trainees righting medicine's historical wrongs
In this episode, host Sandra speaks to Dr. Gbolahan (GB) Olarewaju, a public health resident physician, academic activist, and past and inaugural chair of the Black Medical Students’ Association of Canada. They discuss how decades of discriminatory policies and practices have thrown up obstacles to the medical profession for Black folks – and how the efforts of Black learners and trainees and their allies are righting these wrongs.
Tune in as we delve into the history of medical violence against Black communities, and the role we all play in dismantling structural barriers to health and the health professions.
Resources:
Learn more about the history of medical violence against Black communities in Harriet A. Washington’s 2008 book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.
Familiarize yourself with the concept of race correction with this primer from the Canada-US Coalition to End "Race Correction" in Health Care and in Vyas, D. A., Eisenstein, L. G., and Jones, D. S. (2020). Hidden in plain sight — Reconsidering the use of race correction in clinical algorithms. NEJM, 383. 874-882.
Review some papers about the health impacts of a demographically diverse health care workforce:
Marrast, L. M., Zallman, L., Woolhandler, S. et al. (2014). Minority physicians’ role in the care of underserved patients. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(2). 289-291.
Greenwood, B. N., Hardeman, R. R., Huang, L., and Sojourner, A. (2020). Physician-patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality. PNAS, 117(35), 21194-21200.
Snyder, J. E., Upton, R. D., Hassett, T. C. et al. (2023). Black representation in the primary care physician workforce and its association with population life expectancy and mortality rates in the US. JAMA Network Open, 6(4). E236687.
Watch Dr. GB’s keynote, “Progress and Protection: Intersectional Vigilance and Justice in Research and Advocacy”, given at 2024’s The Summit Conference.
Read ‘The End of Diversity’ (2019) by Rinaldo Walcott, a critique of the language often used around equity and diversity, and a meditation on what true transformative change and structural justice could look like.
Check out this list of Canadian anti-racism resources.
Have a listen to relevant past episodes, eg. on the structural determinants of health, and realizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s health-related calls to action.
Credits:
Additional music by ScovinieBeatz, used under the Pixabay content license.
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