Race and Medicine: Black People Are Not Born Sick

Authors

  • Tiana Walker University of Virginia School of Medicine Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.65539/26qvme49

Keywords:

race and medicine, health disparities, social determinants of health, medical education, structural racism, pulmonary function tests

Abstract

This viewpoint critically examines the use of race-based corrections in medical diagnostic tools, particularly in pulmonary function tests. The author, a Black medical student, traces the historical origins of race-based medicine and argues that social determinants of health, rather than inherent biological differences, account for health disparities. The piece calls for medical education to better integrate discussions of structural racism and social conditions when teaching about health outcomes.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. 1785.

Cartwright, Samuel Adolphus, E. N. Elliot. Cotton Is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments. 1860.

Gould, Benjamin Apthorp. Investigations in the military and anthropological statistics of American soldiers. Vol. 2. US Sanitary Commission. 1869.

Myers, Jay Arthur. Vital capacity of the lungs: A handbook for clinicians and others interested in the examination of the heart and lungs both in health and disease. 1925.

County Health Rankings Measures and Data Sources. University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. 2020

Hood, Carlyn, Keith Gennuso, Geoffrey Swain, and Bridget Catlin. "County health rankings: Relationships between determinant factors and health outcomes." American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2015.08.024

Washington, Harriet A. Medical apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. 2006.

"Air of Injustice: African Americans & Power Plant Pollution." Black Leadership Forum, The Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice, The Georgia Coalition for the Peoples' Agenda and Clear the Air. October 2002.

"Air of Injustice: How Air Pollution Affects the Health of Hispanics and Latinos." League of United Latin American Citizens, July 2004.

Stansbury, Gerald. "Climate Change is Hitting American Hard. Here's How Maryland Can Lead." Washington Post. 2018.

Collins, Francis S., Green, Eric, Guttmacher, Alan, Guyer, Mark. "A vision for the future of genomics research." Nature. 2003. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01626

"NHANES III Reference Manuals and Reports." National Center for Health Statistics. 1996.

Hankinson, John L., John R. Odencrantz, and Kathleen B. Fedan. "Spirometric reference values from a sample of the general US population." American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine. 1999. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1164/ajrccm.159.1.9712108

Braun, Lundy, Melanie Wolfgang, and Kay Dickersin. "Defining race/ethnicity and explaining difference in research studies on lung function." European Respiratory Journal. 2013. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1183/09031936.00091612

Demby, Gene. "On the Census, Who Checks 'Hispanic,' Who Checks 'White,' And Why?" National Public Radio. June 2014.

Yancy, Clyde W. "COVID-19 and African Americans." Jama. 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.6548

Braun, Lundy. Breathing race into the machine: The surprising career of the spirometer from plantation to genetics. 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816683574.001.0001

Downloads

Published

2022-03-24

How to Cite

Race and Medicine: Black People Are Not Born Sick. (2022). Harvard Medical Student Review, 6(1), 11-13. https://doi.org/10.65539/26qvme49

Similar Articles

1-10 of 58

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.