Race Conscious Medicine: A Reality Check

Race Conscious Medicine: A Reality Check

From race-based to race-conscious medicine: how anti-racist uprisings call us to act. A Perspective in The Lancet, from Jessica P Cerdeña, Marie V Plaisime, and Jennifer Tsai.

The brutalisation of Jacob Blake and murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and countless others—coupled with horrifying statistics about the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black and Brown communities—have forced the USA and the world to reckon with how structural racism conditions survival. Although clinicians often imagine themselves as beneficent caregivers, it is increasingly clear that medicine is not a stand-alone institution immune to racial inequities, but rather is an institution of structural racism. A pervasive example of this participation is race-based medicine, the system by which research characterising race as an essential, biological variable, translates into clinical practice, leading to inequitable care.

Tags: anti-racist, culture, equality, health, medicine, Racism...