After a podcast from the prestigious journal JAMA questioned whether systemic racism exists in medicine, doctors and researchers are pressing for sweeping changes.
Last month, Monica McLemore and a team of scientists at the University of California at San Francisco were wrapping up research into a troubling pandemic disparity: Pregnant women of color with COVID-19 appear to be at higher risk for premature birth. It was a finding they hoped to publish in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, one of the world’s most-read research periodicals.
There are stories you read, slap your forehead and say, “What were they thinking?”, to say that of this story would be overly generous.
“Personally, I think taking ‘racism’ out of the conversation would help,” Livingston said on the Feb. 23 show, titled “Structural Racism for Doctors—What Is It?” “Many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist.” Online, the journal promoted the podcast with a tweet that said, “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?”
