Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin. Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain group. Governments can discriminate in a de facto fashion or explicitly in law, for example through policies of racial segregation, disparate enforcement of laws, or disproportionate allocation of resources. Some jurisdictions have anti-discrimination laws which prohibit the government or individuals from discriminating based on race in various circumstances. Some institutions and laws use affirmative action to attempt to overcome or compensate for the effects of racial discrimination. In some cases, this is simply enhanced recruitment of members of underrepresented groups; in other cases, there are firm racial quotas. Opponents of strong remedies like quotas characterize them as reverse discrimination, where members of a dominant or majority group are discriminated against.
Race and health refers to how being identified with a specific race influences health. Race is a complex concept that has changed across chronological eras and depends on both self-identification and social recognition. In the study of race and health, scientists organize people in racial categories depending on different factors such as: phenotype, ancestry, social identity, genetic makeup and lived experience. "Race" and ethnicity often remain undifferentiated in health research.
Aversive racism is a theory proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner & John F. Dovidio (1986), according to which negative evaluations of racial/ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As opposed to traditional, overt racism, which is characterized by overt hatred for and discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities, aversive racism is characterized by more complex, ambivalent expressions and attitudes nonetheless with prejudicial views towards other races. Aversive racism arises from unconscious personal beliefs taught during childhood. Subtle racist behaviors are usually targeted towards African Americans. Workplace discrimination is one of the best examples of aversive racism. Biased beliefs on how minorities act and think affect how individuals interact with minority members.
Lisa A. Cooper is an American internal medicine and public health physician who is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Healthcare at Johns Hopkins University, jointly appointed in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and in the departments of Health, Behavior and Society, Health Policy and Management; Epidemiology; and International Health in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. Cooper is also a Gilman Scholar and a core faculty member in the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research. She is internationally recognized for her research on the impact of race, ethnicity and gender on the patient-physician relationship and subsequent health disparities. She is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In 2007, she received a MacArthur Fellowship ”genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
Research shows many health disparities among different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Different outcomes in mental and physical health exist between all U.S. Census-recognized racial groups, but these differences stem from different historical and current factors, including genetics, socioeconomic factors, and racism. Research has demonstrated that numerous health care professionals show implicit bias in the way that they treat patients. Certain diseases have a higher prevalence among specific racial groups, and life expectancy also varies across groups.
Ruha Benjamin is a sociologist and a Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. The primary focus of her work is the relationship between innovation and equity, particularly focusing on the intersection of race, justice and technology. Benjamin is the author of numerous publications, including the books People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013), Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019) and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022).
The weathering hypothesis was proposed to account for early health deterioration as a result of cumulative exposure to experiences of social, economic and political adversity. It is well documented that minority groups and marginalized communities suffer from poorer health outcomes. This may be due to a multitude of stressors including prejudice, social alienation, institutional bias, political oppression, economic exclusion and racial discrimination. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the cumulative burden of these stressors as individuals age is "weathering," and the increased weathering experienced by minority groups compared to others can account for differences in health outcomes. In recent years, the biological plausibility of the weathering hypothesis has been investigated in studies evaluating the physiological effects of social, environmental and political stressors among marginalized communities. This has led to more widespread use of the weathering hypothesis as a framework for explaining health disparities on the basis of differential exposure to racially based stressors. Researchers have also identified patterns connecting weathering to biological phenomena associated with stress and aging, such as allostatic load, epigenetics, telomere shortening, and accelerated brain aging.
Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.
Uché Blackstock is an American emergency physician and former associate professor of emergency medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. She is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, which has a primary mission to engage with healthcare and related organizations around bias and racism in healthcare with the goal of mobilizing for health equity and eradicating racialized health inequities. During the COVID-19 pandemic Blackstock used social media to share her experiences and concerns as a physician working on the front lines and on racial health disparities and inequities exposed by the pandemic. She is best known for her work amplifying the message on racial health inequities and her media appearances speaking on the COVID-19 pandemic. She has been featured on Meet the Press, PBS NewsHour, Slate and Forbes among others. Blackstock became a Yahoo! News Medical Contributor in June 2020.
Rhea W. Boyd is an American pediatrician and child and community health advocate. Boyd is a popular science communicator, making use of social media to amplify a diverse range of voices in an effort to improve the heath of communities of colour.
Chandra L. Ford is an American public health academic who is Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as Founding Director at the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health. Her research considers relationships between racism and health outcomes.
Black maternal mortality in the United States refers to the death of women, specifically those who identify as Black or African American, during or after child delivery. In general, maternal death can be due to a myriad of factors, such as how the nature of the pregnancy or the delivery itself, but is not associated with unintentional or secondary causes. In the United States, around 700 women die from pregnancy-related illnesses or complications per year. This number does not include the approximately 50,000 women who experience life-threatening complications during childbirth, resulting in lifelong disabilities and complications. However, there are stark differences in maternal mortality rates for Black American women versus Indigenous American, Alaska Native, and White American women.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed race-based health care disparities in many countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Singapore. These disparities are believed to originate from structural racism in these countries which pre-dates the pandemic; a commentary in The BMJ noted that "ethnoracialised differences in health outcomes have become the new normal across the world" as a result of ethnic and racial disparities in COVID-19 healthcare, determined by social factors. Data from the United States and elsewhere shows that minorities, especially black people, have been infected and killed at a disproportionate rate to white people.
Sirry Alang is a Cameroonian-American Health Services Researcher. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Health, Medicine and Society at Lehigh University. Alang is also a Medical Sociologist. Her research examines the structural causes of health inequity and the social determinants of health.
Katy Backes Kozhimannil is an American public health researcher who is a professor at the University of Minnesota. Her research considers maternal mortality and the impacts of structural racism on community health. In 2020 she was awarded the 25th Annual Heinz Award in Public Policy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unequal impact on different racial and ethnic groups in the United States, resulting in new disparities of health outcomes as well as exacerbating existing health and economic disparities.
White Americans, as the largest racial group in the United States, have historically had better health outcomes than other oppressed racial groups in America. However, in recent years, the scholarly discourse has switched from recognition of the immense positive health outcomes of white Americans towards understanding the growing persistence of negative outcomes unique to this racial group. Scholars have discussed the effects of racial prejudice and its negative effect on health outcomes to not only those being oppressed but also those being given privileges. In addition to the effects of living in a racialized society, white Americans have the highest rate of suicide and lifetime psychiatric disorders of any other ethnicity or racial category. In conjunction with these psychiatric issues, the population presents higher rates of alcohol usage alongside lower levels of psychological flourishing. Given this information, the health status of white Americans has gained increasing importance due to the differences in health outcomes between white Americans and white people from other parts of the world.
Medical racism in the United States encompasses discriminatory and targeted medical practices and misrepresentations in medical teachings driven by biases based on characteristics of patients' race and ethnicity. In American history, it has impacted various racial and ethnic groups and affected their health outcomes. Vulnerable subgroups within these racial and ethnic groups such as women, children and the poor have been especially endangered over the years. An ongoing phenomenon since at least the 18th century in the United States, medical racism has been evident on a widespread basis through various unethical studies, forced procedures, and differential treatments administered by health care providers, researchers, and even sometimes government entities. Whether medical racism is always caused by explicitly prejudiced beliefs about patients based on race or by unconscious bias is not widely agreed upon.
Valerie Rawlston Wilson is an American economist who directs the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE). She was previously vice president of research at the National Urban League Washington Bureau. She researches and writes about economic inequality in the United States in employment and training, income and wealth disparities, access to higher education, and social insurance. She has testified before the United States Congressional Committee on Education and Labor on How COVID-19 Widened Racial Inequities in Education, Health, and the Workforce. She is the 2022 president of the National Economic Association.
Michelle van Ryn is an American health researcher who is the Grace Phelps Distinguished Professor at the Oregon Health & Science University. Her research considers the social determinants of health and equity in healthcare. She demonstrated that physicians' perceptions of patients was impacted by their socio-demographic status. She is the founder of Diversity Sciences, a consultancy company who provide evidence-based training for organizations looking to eliminate bias.
