Racial Equity Reading Group
Discussions are usually on the third or fourth Wednesday of the month at 7:30pm.
To join please email info@sfbaypsr.org. We will email Zoom info to you.
All are welcome (not just health professionals).
You’re invited! SF Bay PSR has launched an informal reading and discussion group to learn more about issues of racial equity, particularly as they relate to the fields of public health and medicine. We read a different book or articles every 4-6 weeks, followed by a 60–90-minute discussion on Zoom. This online, drop-in group is open to anyone (not just health professionals) seeking to deepen their personal understanding of issues related to systemic racism and strengthen their commitment toward creating a more just, equitable, and healthy world.
The conversations are usually facilitated by SF Bay PSR Board Members Dr. Jeff Ritterman and Dr. Marjaneh Moini.
UPCOMING DISCUSSIONS & READINGS
Wednesday, June 22, 2022, 7:30pm
Readings will be emailed to the group.
PAST READINGS
May 25, 2022:
We discussed an article and a video regarding Paul Farmer’s book:
- FEVERS, FEUDS, AND DIAMONDS: Ebola and the Ravages of History
- NY Times: The Deadliness of the 2014 Ebola Outbreak Was Not Inevitable
- Video: Paul Farmer: Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds
April 20, 2022:
- “Redlining means 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air, 50 years after it ended” Decades of federal housing discrimination known as redlining accounts for the fact that 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today.
- “Historic redlining and the siting of oil and gas wells in the United States.” This study adds to the evidence that structural racism in federal policy is associated with the disproportionate siting of oil and gas wells in marginalized neighborhoods.
March 23, 2022:
February 23, 2022:
“Structural Racism In Historical and Modern US Health Care Policy”
NOVEMBER 17, 2021:
- Bill Moyers PODCAST: Heather McGhee: How American Racism has a Cost for Everyone
- If you have time, please read the book too: The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee
Special Events! SEPTEMBER 14, 2021: PART 1
Join SF Bay PSR and City Lights Bookstore for the launch of Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine, by Jim Downs in conversation with Allyson Hobbs, and join our discussion on Sept 30, see below.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2021: PART 2
Join us for a special discussion of Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine
Please support your local bookstore.
AUGUST 25, 2021: PART 2
Discussion of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice led by Dr. Rupa Marya
Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, by Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel
Special Event! AUGUST 3, 2021: PART 1
City Lights Bookstore in collaboration with SF Bay PSR hosted a book launch for Dr. Rupa Marya, UCSF, and Raj Patel’s new book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, and join our discussion on August 25, see below.
CHECK here for City Lights Bookstore’s YouTube channel to view the recording, coming soon
MAY 19, 2021:
SB 17: This bill would establish a California State Office of Racial Equity and direct state agencies to implement the Racial Equity Framework to address environmental justice and health inequity issues. READ the text of the bill here.
- Cancer Alley petrochemical industry opposition movement:
- Common Dreams: 175 Groups Urge Banks Not to Fund Massive ‘Cancer Alley’ Chemical Plant in Louisiana
- Truth Out: Lawmakers Call for Biden to Block Massive Petrochemical Complex in Cancer Alley
APRIL 2021: PART 2:
Book: Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility, by Dorceta E. Taylor, New York University Press
Please consider purchasing books directly from the publisher or from your LOCAL BOOKSTORE to help protect creative diversity, or via Bookshop.org which gives a percentage of every sale back to independent bookstores.
MARCH 2021: PART 1:
- Lancet Planetary Health: Environmental racism: time to tackle social injustice
- American Journal of Public Health: Bridging Climate, Health, and Equity: A Growing Imperative
- Nature: How environmental racism fuels pandemics, by Harriet A. Washington
- Podcast: How to Save a Planet: Black Lives Matter and the Climate: Black Lives Matter is the largest movement in US history, and it’s had environmental justice as part of its policy platform from the start. In today’s show, Alex and Ayana talk about why the fight for racial justice is critical to saving the planet and what the broader climate movement can learn from the Black Lives Matter movement.
JANUARY 2021: Articles on trustworthiness before trust and Black communitys’ vaccine hesitancy
- Annals of Internal Medicine: Attitudes Toward a Potential SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine: A Survey of US Adults
- New Yorker: African-American Resistance to the COVID-19 Vaccine Reflects a Broader Problem
- CDC: The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ Ethical Principles for Allocating Initial Supplies of COVID-19 Vaccine — United States, 2020
- NEJM: Trustworthiness before Trust – Covid-19 Vaccine Trials and the Black Community
NOVEMBER 2020: Articles on the ue of race in clinical algorithms.
- Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites, Hoffman et al. PMID 27044069
- The Myth of Innate Racial Differences Between White and Black People’s Bodies: Lessons From the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hogarth. PMID 31415198
- Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms, Vyas et al. PMID 32853499