Highlighted Articles and Reports
- An American Crisis: The Growing Absence of Black Men in Medicine and ScienceProceedings of a 2018 joint workshop of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute. Available in ebook format from the National Academies Press.
- Discrimination Toward Physicians of ColorFilut A, Alvarez M, Carnes M. Discrimination toward physicians of color: A systematic review. J Natl Med Assoc. 2020 Apr; 112(2):117-140. DOI: 10.1016/j.jnma.2020.02.008.
- Experiences of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Medical Students and PhysiciansDimant OE, Cook TE, Greene RE, Radix AE. Experiences of transgender and gender nonbinary medical students and physicians. Transgend Health. 2019 Sep; 4(1):209-216. DOI: 10.1089/trgh.2019.0021.
- Health Care Workplace Discrimination and Physician TurnoverNunez-Smith M, Pilgrim N, Wynia M, Desai MM, Bright C, Krumholz HM, Bradley EH. Health care workplace discrimination and physician turnover. J Natl Med Assoc. 2009 Dec; 101(12):1274-1282. DOI: 10.1016/s0027-9684(15)31139-1.
- The Impacts of Racism and Bias on Black People Pursuing Careers in Science, Engineering, and MedicineProceedings of a workshop by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. PDF available for free download.
- Proceedings of the Diversity and Inclusion Innovation Forum: Unconscious Bias in Academic MedicineReport from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
- Resident Physician Experiences With and Responses to Biased Patientsde Bourmont SS, Burra A, Nouri SS, El-Farra N, Mohottige D, Sloan C, Schaeffer S, Friedman J, Fernandez A. Resident physician experiences with and responses to biased patients. JAMA Netw Open. 2020 Nov; 3(11):e2021769. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.21769.
- Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and MedicineReport from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
- Summary Report: Listening Sessions on Racism in NursingReport outlining issues related to racism in nursing from the American Nurses Association's National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing.
Unconscious Bias
Additional Web Resources
- Academic Diversity SearchJob site dedicated to helping women and people of color find positions in academic institutions.
- NIH Diversity Program ConsortiumMentoring network and funding opportunities for students and faculty from backgrounds underrepresented in medical research.
- Recruiting, Training, and Retaining LGBTQ-Proficient Clinical Providers: A Workforce Development ToolkitAdvice from the National LGBT Health Education Center for developing a healthcare staff competent in providing services to LGBT+ patients.
Asian Inclusion in Academic Medicine
Healthcare Providers of Color
Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon by
Today he is known as Dr. Q, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who leads cutting-edge research to cure brain cancer. But not too long ago, he was Freddy, a nineteen-year-old undocumented migrant worker toiling in the tomato fields of central California. In this gripping memoir, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa tells his amazing life story--from his impoverished childhood in the tiny village of Palaco, Mexico, to his harrowing border crossing and his transformation from illegal immigrant to American citizen and gifted student at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard Medical School. Packed with adventure and adversity--including a few terrifying brushes with death--Becoming Dr. Q is a testament to persistence, hard work, the power of hope and imagination, and the pursuit of excellence. It's also a story about the importance of family, of mentors, and of giving people a chance.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780520949607Publication Date: 2011
Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine by
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK SELECTION * A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE BOOK SELECTION One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans When Damon Tweedy begins medical school,he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites." Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
Call Number: WZ100 .T84 2015 (Kornhauser) / R154.T84 A3 2015 (Ekstrom)ISBN: 9781250044631Publication Date: 2015
A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights: Edward C. Mazique, M.D. by
"This powerful biography traces the career of an African American physician and civil rights advocate, Edward Craig Mazique (1911-1987), from the poverty and discrimination of Natchez, Mississippi, to his status as a prominent physician in Washington, D.C. Florence Ridlon relates how Dr. Mazique's grandfather went from being a slave to becoming one of the largest landowners in Adams County, Mississippi. This moving story of one man's accomplishments, in spite of many opposing forces, is also a chapter in the struggle of African Americans to achieve equality in the twentieth-century. At a time when blacks were being denied entry into the American Medical Association and the staffs of most hospitals, Dr. Mazique was president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society and the National Medical Association, black counterparts to the all-white District Medical Society and American Medical Association. Dr. Mazique worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as well as black physicians, to expand the availability of health care at a time when many conservative physicians, both black and white, opposed the establishment of Medicare and other federal health programs. Much of this story is in Dr. Mazique's own words, taken from interviews with the author. What emerges from this biography is a picture of an exceptional but very human man, who, despite discrimination and repression, excelled beyond all expectations. From A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights "The power he had! I don't think there was a president that occupied that White House that didn't have him there for consultation. He was so respected as a human being, above and beyond medicine. When the people in the Civil Rights movement would say things to government people, they were suspect because they had to make political decisions. Eddie was someone they could call in who they not only trusted but respected. He had the type of integrity that even if government leaders wouldn't listen to his advice or follow up, the civil rights people knew when he went to see presidents and stuff, he wasn't back there lying. That was the great thing about him--his honesty and integrity."--comedian and political activist, Dick Gregory, speaking about Dr. Mazique in an interview with Florence Ridlon"
Call Number: R695.M35 R53 2005 (Ekstrom)ISBN: 0826333397Publication Date: 2005
Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy by
What happens to black health care professionals in the new economy, where work is insecure and organizational resources are scarce? In Flatlining, Adia Harvey Wingfield exposes how hospitals, clinics, and other institutions participate in "racial outsourcing," relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians, and physician assistants to do "equity work"--extra labor that makes organizations and their services more accessible to communities of color. Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today's workplaces and communities.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780520971783Publication Date: 2019
In the Nation's Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health-Care Workforce by
The United States is rapidly transforming into one of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in the world. Groups commonly referred to as minorities--including Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and Alaska Natives--are the fastest growing segments of the population and emerging as the nation's majority. Despite the rapid growth of racial and ethnic minority groups, their representation among the nation's health professionals has grown only modestly in the past 25 years. This alarming disparity has prompted the recent creation of initiatives to increase diversity in health professions. "In the Nation's Compelling Interest" considers the benefits of greater racial and ethnic diversity, and identifies institutional and policy-level mechanisms to garner broad support among health professions leaders, community members, and other key stakeholders to implement these strategies. Assessing the potential benefits of greater racial and ethnic diversity among health professionals will improve the access to and quality of healthcare for all Americans.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 030953058XPublication Date: 2004
My Quest for Health Equity by
Reading this book is like sitting down with Dr. David Satcher to hear stories of leadership and lessons learned from his lifetime commitment to health equity. Dr. David Satcher is one of the most widely known and well-regarded physicians of our time. A former four-star admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he served as the assistant secretary for health, the surgeon general of the United States, and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before founding the eponymous Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. At the core of his impact on public health, he is also a lifelong leader for civil rights and health equity. Born black and poor in the deep South, Dr. Satcher was a victim of an unjust health care system: he almost died of whooping cough at the age of two because Jim Crow laws meant that his black doctor could not admit him to a hospital. That experience was the first of many that shaped him as a leader and a healer deeply attuned to social inequity--someone who was determined to make a positive difference. med In My Quest for Health Equity, Dr. Satcher takes an inspiring and instructive look inside his fifty-year career to shed light on the challenge and burden of leadership. Explaining that he has thought of each leadership role--whether in academia, community, or government--as an opportunity to move the needle toward health equity, he shares the hard-won lessons he has learned over a lifetime in the medical field. Drawing on his early memories, medical school days, experience in the civil rights movement, and professional highs and lows, Dr. Satcher touches on a number of topics, including * the essential qualities of leadership * leading from science to policy to practice * the importance of clear communication and continual learning * the need for workplace discipline * confronting failure * specific health issues, including the obesity epidemic, reproductive health, and mental health stigma * team approaches to leadership * and much more In this book, readers will discover a template for using leadership roles of all types to eliminate health disparities. My Quest for Health Equityis a vital resource for current and rising leaders.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9781421438320Publication Date: 2020
The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care by
Contributions by Richard D. deShazo, John Dittmer, Keydron K. Guinn, Lucius M. Lampton, Wilson F. Minor, Rosemary Moak, Sara B. Parker, Wayne J. Riley, Leigh Baldwin Skipworth, Robert Smith, and William F. Winter The Racial Divide in American Medicine documents the struggle for equity in health and health care by African Americans in Mississippi and the United States and the connections between what happened there and the national search for social justice in health care. Dr. Richard D. deShazo and the contributors to the volume trace the dark journey from a system of slave hospitals in the state, through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era, to the present day. They substantiate that current health disparities are directly linked to America's history of separation, neglect, struggle, and disparities. Contributors reveal details of individual physicians' journeys for recognition both as African Americans and as professionals in Mississippi. Despite discrimination by their white colleagues and threats of violence, a small but fearless group of African American physicians fought for desegregation of American medicine and society. For example, T. R. M. Howard, MD, in the all-black city of Mound Bayou led a private investigation of the Emmett Till murder that helped trigger the civil rights movement. Later, other black physicians risked their lives and practices to provide care for white civil rights workers during the civil rights movement. DeShazo has assembled an accurate account of the lives and experiences of black physicians in Mississippi, one that gives full credit to the actions of these pioneers. DeShazo's introduction and the essays address ongoing isolation and distrust among black and white colleagues. This book will stimulate dialogue, apology, and reconciliation, with the ultimate goal of improving disparities in health and health care and addressing long-standing injustices in our country.
Call Number: W76 .AA1 R33 2018 (Kornhauser)ISBN: 9781496817686Publication Date: 2018
Seeing Patients: A Surgeon's Story of Race and Medical Bias by
"A powerful and extraordinarily important book." --James P. Comer, MD "A marvelous personal journey that illuminates what it means to care for people of all races, religions, and cultures. The story of this man becomes the aspiration of all those who seek to minister not only to the body but also to the soul." --Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think Growing up in Jim Crow-era Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. While race relations have changed dramatically since then, old ways of thinking die hard. In this blend of memoir and manifesto, Dr. White draws on his experience as a resident at Stanford Medical School, a combat surgeon in Vietnam, and head orthopedic surgeon at one of Harvard's top teaching hospitals to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical care, and to explore how we can do better in a diverse twenty-first-century America. "Gus White is many things--trailblazing physician, gifted surgeon, and freedom fighter. Seeing Patients demonstrates to the world what many of us already knew--that he is also a compelling storyteller. This powerful memoir weaves personal experience and scientific research to reveal how the enduring legacy of social inequality shapes America's medical field. For medical practitioners and patients alike, Dr. White offers both diagnosis and prescription." --Jonathan L. Walton, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Harvard University "A tour de force--a compelling story about race, health, and conquering inequality in medical care...Dr. White has a uniquely perceptive lens with which to see and understand unconscious bias in health care...His journey is so absorbing that you will not be able to put this book down." --Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., author of All Deliberate Speed
Call Number: W84 .AA1 W45 2019 (Kornhauser)ISBN: 0674241371Publication Date: 2019
Women in Medicine
Changing the Culture of Academic Medicine: Perspectives of Women Faculty by
Over the past twenty-five years, steadily increasing numbers of women have graduated as physicians, in sufficient numbers to be well represented in senior and leadership positions in the nation's academic medical centers. Yet women's expected advancement has stalled. Women rarely hold decision-making positions, and female department chairs or deans continue to be exceedingly rare. Why is this the case? Pololi's study, based on extensive interviews, illuminates medical school culture and shows a sharp disconnect between the values of individual faculty members and the values of academic institutions of medicine. Pololi looks closely at women medical faculty's experiences as outsiders in medicine, opening a window into medical culture. She argues that placing more women and people of color in leadership positions would provide transformative and more effective leadership to improve health care and would help address current inequities in the health care provided to different racial and cultural groups.
Call Number: W 18 .P55 2010 (Kornhauser)ISBN: 9781584655671Publication Date: 2010
Black Men in Medicine
Professional Organizations
Medical Associations
Additional Healthcare Organizations