Racial Equity Reading Group
In 2023, we will be hosting four discussions in February, April, September, and November with authors and leaders in racial equity.
To join please RSVP below.
All are welcome (not just health professionals).
You’re invited to learn more about issues of racial equity, particularly as they relate to the fields of public health and medicine. The discussions are 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.
Our hearts go out to Tyre Nichols’ family and friends, and to all those who have lost loved ones by gun and police violence. This discussion series is also part of our ongoing commitment to address the public health emergencies of gun and police violence, particularly toward African-Americans who are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people.
UPCOMING DISCUSSIONS & READINGS
Inequality Kills Us All
Discussion with Stephen Bezruchka
author of Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19’s Health Lessons for the World
Tuesday, February 21, 7:00 pm PT, online
RSVP HERE
BEFORE joining the discussion:
1. Please listen to this radio show:
About Health with host RN Rona Renner and guest Stephen Bezruchka
Monday: February 13, 10:40 AM PT, or online at KPFA Radio
After Monday, you can listen to the show online at your leisure.
2. Please read this article by Bezruchka: “Inequality is literally killing us: The most unequal societies suffer most in public health metrics”
3. If you have the time, please also read his outstanding book. You can buy it at this link or ask your local library for a copy: Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19’s Health Lessons for the World, published by Routledge.
Stephen Bezruchka is a graduate of Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford universities. He teaches courses in population health in the Departments of Health Systems and Population Health and of Global Health as faculty in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. He worked clinically as a doctor for 35 years including three decades as an emergency physician. He spent over 11 years in Nepal, writing the first trekking guide to that country, running a community health project a week’s walk from the road, training Nepali doctors in a remote district hospital, and advancing concepts of population health. He created the Population Health Forum in 1997. He serves on the board of directors of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and works with its Economic Inequity Health Task Force.
READ MORE at his WEBSITE
PAST READINGS
November, 2022:
October 2022:
May 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 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 2022:
February 2022:
“Structural Racism In Historical and Modern US Health Care Policy”
NOVEMBER 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 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 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 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 Events! AUGUST 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 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