I’m so happy to have gotten the chance to collaborate with Emily Mendenhall on a new essay just published via Scientific American. We introduce readers to the syndemic framework and show how the particular combination of the virus, deep-seated inequality, and politics has made—and will likely continue to make—COVID-19 particularly vicious in the U.S.
Robert H. Layton Lecture at Durham University
Tomorrow I have the honor of giving the 2021 Robert H. Layton Lecture in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. The Layton Lecture Series celebrates work at the intersection of different sub-fields of anthropology. In line with this theme, my talk will focus on integrating methods and theory from the social and biological sciences to explain and redress racism and health inequities. Registration is open to the public.
AMA YouTube Series: Prioritizing Equity
I recently had the pleasure of joining Dr. Robert Fullilove and Dr. Aletha Maybank, Chief Health Equity Officer of the American Medical Association, in conversation for AMA’s YouTube series, Prioritizing Equity. The episode, “How the Past Informs the Present in Healthcare,” was published today.
Our wide-ranging conversation centers white supremacy and structural racism as root causes of racial inequities in health. We talk about the infamous JAMA podcast, a letter Dr. Fullilove’s father wrote to JAMA in 1943, the 1970 JAMA paper that was the impetus for my work on skin color and blood pressure in Puerto Rico, the 400 Years of Inequality Project, the role of redlining and race-based residential segregation in health inequity, and recent evidence that paying reparations to descendants of people who were enslaved in the United States would have reduced the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone.
Talk for University of South Carolina College of Social Work
This week I’ll give a talk sponsored by the Office of Research at the University of South Carolina College of Social Work. The talk, “Measuring and Measurement: Linking Qualitative and Quantitative Data to Enhance Cultural Validity,” will be streamed online and is open to the public.
A common rationale for adopting mixed-methods approaches is to ensure that survey measures and other instruments capture meaningful parts of people’s experience. This seminar outlines methods for linking qualitative data with measurement strategies that enhance cultural validity. The methods take advantage of recent developments in culture theory and ethnography, with broad relevance across the social sciences.
Screening and discussion of Race: The Power of An Illusion
On May 6, the University of Michigan Survey Research Center, the Anti-Racism Task Force of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences (IAPHS) will be hosting an online screening and discussion of the first episode of the three-part film series Race: The Power of An Illusion. Following the film, Drs. Devon Payne-Sturges and Margaret Hicken will moderate a panel discussion with Prof. Evelynn Hammonds, Chair of the Department of History of Science at Harvard, and me. See more and register at the IAPHS website.
New essay about a JAMA podcast and structural racism in medicine
About a month ago, the Journal of the American Medical Association made a splash with a podcast about structural racism in medicine. Ironically, the podcast (and accompanying tweet) were racist — in a way that many white people don’t understand (by design).
I rage-tweeted about it, then rage-taught about it, then rage-wrote about it. Hopefully you’ll find the analysis level-headed but the rage still simmering, just below the surface.
You can read the essay over at Somatosphere.
If you’d like to use the essay in teaching, you might consider having students read this transcript I created while working on the essay. (I made the first draft of the transcript with otter.ai, so I guess I can’t claim to have rage-transcribed.)
