Racial Equity

Marisa K. Dowling, MD, MPP, health policy fellow in the Department of Emergency Medicine, and U.S. Rep. Robin L. Kelly, PhD (D-Ill.) authored a viewpoint article in JAMA calling for policy to address health disparities and COVID-19.

Janice Blanchard, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, spoke with The Washington Post for an article on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on communities of color.

In a recent virtual event, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jehan “Gigi” El-Bayoumi, MD, RESD ’88, founding director of the GW Rodham Institute, spoke about a range of topics, including COVID-19 and the recent protests over the killing of George Floyd.

For the GW Rodham Institute, providing help to marginalized populations during COVID-19 is about the needs of the community. “We need to provide community-led solutions,” she said. “... [W]e are the conveners, connectors, and catalyzers based on what the community tells us it needs most.”

A paper published in Academic Medicine focuses on how U.S. medical schools can address race and culture in medical education.

For generations in America, matters of racial equity and civil rights have been framed in rigidly defined terms: an act, a view, or a piece of legislation was either racist or not racist.

Dayna Bowen Matthew discussed the impact of implicit racial and ethnic bias on health equity at the second annual Martin Luther King Jr. lecture.

David Acosta, MD, chief diversity and inclusion officer at the AAMC, discussed racial barriers in academic medicine in a special Internal Medicine Grand Rounds, co-sponsored by the SMHS Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Camara Jones, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., the immediate past president of the American Public Health Association, spoke to SMHS students and faculty about racism in health care and its impact on the wellness of the United States in a recent lecture.