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Health & Medicine as Social Sciences: Minorities and Medicine
Inequities in health
Medical Research
In the past Medical Research has unethically treated minorities in the name of research as seen in the case of Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee Study. It is crucial to learn about these scenarios to prevent such events from happening again.
Griffith et al conducted focus groups consisting of African American, Latinx, and White adults to determine what factors make a a researcher or an institution trustworthy. Resulting from this study were three themes that impacted how the participants determined trustworthiness.
- Who is trustworthy to conduct medical research?
- What influences trustworthiness in medical research?
- What institutions or settings are trustworthy to conduct medical research?
Ultimately, much of the trustworthiness of individuals and institutions was determined by their previous activity in the research community. (Source 3)
Literature
- Racism and Health: A Reading List by the AAMC"This non-exhaustive collection of select research articles and books, both seminal and new, describes how racism affects health and well-being and offers a starting place for further exploration."
Underrepresentation in Medicine
According to the AAMC Diversity in Medicine: Facts and Figures Report for 2019, 56.2% of active Physicians were White and 64.1% were male. When reviewing the youngest cohort of physicians (34 years old or younger) it was seen that "women outnumbered men in most racial and ethnic groups". (Source 1)
Underrepresentation ultimately stems from the experience of students during the Medical School application process. Hadinger (Source 2) identifies struggles students faced when applying in her paper. Barriers and Supports during the application process included a variety of factors such as:
- Information, guidance, and social support
- Financial and academic factors, and
- Persistence
Healthcare and Minority Communities
Skin Color representation in medical education
- Mind the Gap: A handbook of clinical signs in Black and Brown skin"Mind the Gap is a clinical handbook of signs and symptoms in Black and Brown skin. The aims of this project were to highlight the lack of diversity in medical literature and education."
Sources
Books
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by ISBN: 9781400052172Publication Date: 2010-02-02Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions; Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits.
Killing the Black Body by ISBN: 9780679758693Publication Date: 1998-12-29Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication.
Medical Apartheid by ISBN: 0385509936Publication Date: 2007-01-09From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black Americas shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities.
Our Bodies, Ourselves by ISBN: 9781439190661Publication Date: 2011-10-04Hailed by The New York Times as a "feminist classic," and "America's bestselling book on women's health," the comprehensive guide to all aspects of women's health and sexuality, including menopause, birth control, childbirth, sexual health, sexual orientation, gender identity, mental health and general well-being. Six years after the 2005 overhaul of this classic guide to women's health, the 2011 edition focuses on what Our Bodies, Ourselves does best: provide information on women's reproductive health and sexuality; practical information on how find and access health information; and resources, stories, and information to educate women about health care injustices and inspire them to work collectively to address them.
- Last Updated: Jan 17, 2023 9:58 AM
- URL: https://libguides.gvsu.edu/healthandmedicine
