Post by ck4829 on Feb 17, 2022 4:06:18 GMT -6
The white nationalist threat to antiracist medicine in Boston
There’s no time in recent memory when social disparities haven’t been reflected in disparities of risk for disease, delayed diagnosis, poor-quality care, and premature death or disability. In the United States, racism remains a ranking driver of such disparities; those disparities widen as new tools to prevent and treat disease are made available to some and not to others. COVID-19 serves as the latest object lesson in this regard, within this nation and across the globe.
It’s a well-known fact that many forces leading to health disparities, racism among them, are concentrated beyond the walls of medical institutions. Teaching hospitals share three main goals: to care for the sick and injured, to train each generation to provide quality care, and to generate the knowledge to improve care and develop and test therapies that might prevent illness and improve health — and save lives already imperiled. But hospitals like Brigham and Women’s have an important role to play in addressing social pathologies, too.
Partners In Health, a Boston-based charity, has a similar mission, providing medical care to those who might otherwise not receive it. Twenty years ago, hospital and charity joined forces to establish, at the Brigham, a training and research unit called the Division of Global Health Equity. Its residency program in internal medicine and global health equity, accredited by the American Board of Internal Medicine, was the nation’s first and has since been followed by programs in many teaching hospitals and professions, including nursing, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and palliative care.
The objective of these efforts is to provide better care to more people, and if much of our research is focused on racism, it’s because over a century of research has shown racism to be implicated in poor health outcomes — within hospitals and outside them, in cities and towns, and in pretty much every county or country in which we’ve done research. Evidence shows that racism, especially anti-Black racism, kills, and not only with bullets: Denial of essential goods and services can also kill. And because we tend to patients of every description, we know that racism ruins our ability to provide excellent care for all, just as its corrosive effects damage our professional communities from within.
It’s in everyone’s interest that clinical medicine, training, and research be antiracist, and this tardy epiphany has spread throughout academic medical centers. So imagine our dismay when we learned that two of our former trainees and current colleagues — Dr. Michelle Morse and Dr. Bram Wispelwey, both graduates of the residency program —were recently singled out by a group of self-described white nationalists who protested in front of the Brigham with a banner claiming “B&W Hospital Kills Whites.” The protesters gathered in front of the entrance to the oldest part of the Brigham, doors through which our colleagues have for years walked in order to see patients, teach students from Harvard Medical School, and make medicine matter to those who need it most. Over the past decade, Morse and Wispelwey, in particular, put heart and soul into addressing deficiencies in the medical system in the United States and medical systems around the world.
www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/07/opinion/white-nationalist-threat-antiracist-medicine-boston/
There’s no time in recent memory when social disparities haven’t been reflected in disparities of risk for disease, delayed diagnosis, poor-quality care, and premature death or disability. In the United States, racism remains a ranking driver of such disparities; those disparities widen as new tools to prevent and treat disease are made available to some and not to others. COVID-19 serves as the latest object lesson in this regard, within this nation and across the globe.
It’s a well-known fact that many forces leading to health disparities, racism among them, are concentrated beyond the walls of medical institutions. Teaching hospitals share three main goals: to care for the sick and injured, to train each generation to provide quality care, and to generate the knowledge to improve care and develop and test therapies that might prevent illness and improve health — and save lives already imperiled. But hospitals like Brigham and Women’s have an important role to play in addressing social pathologies, too.
Partners In Health, a Boston-based charity, has a similar mission, providing medical care to those who might otherwise not receive it. Twenty years ago, hospital and charity joined forces to establish, at the Brigham, a training and research unit called the Division of Global Health Equity. Its residency program in internal medicine and global health equity, accredited by the American Board of Internal Medicine, was the nation’s first and has since been followed by programs in many teaching hospitals and professions, including nursing, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and palliative care.
The objective of these efforts is to provide better care to more people, and if much of our research is focused on racism, it’s because over a century of research has shown racism to be implicated in poor health outcomes — within hospitals and outside them, in cities and towns, and in pretty much every county or country in which we’ve done research. Evidence shows that racism, especially anti-Black racism, kills, and not only with bullets: Denial of essential goods and services can also kill. And because we tend to patients of every description, we know that racism ruins our ability to provide excellent care for all, just as its corrosive effects damage our professional communities from within.
It’s in everyone’s interest that clinical medicine, training, and research be antiracist, and this tardy epiphany has spread throughout academic medical centers. So imagine our dismay when we learned that two of our former trainees and current colleagues — Dr. Michelle Morse and Dr. Bram Wispelwey, both graduates of the residency program —were recently singled out by a group of self-described white nationalists who protested in front of the Brigham with a banner claiming “B&W Hospital Kills Whites.” The protesters gathered in front of the entrance to the oldest part of the Brigham, doors through which our colleagues have for years walked in order to see patients, teach students from Harvard Medical School, and make medicine matter to those who need it most. Over the past decade, Morse and Wispelwey, in particular, put heart and soul into addressing deficiencies in the medical system in the United States and medical systems around the world.
www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/07/opinion/white-nationalist-threat-antiracist-medicine-boston/