Challenges of Racism and Health Equity in Medicine

The racial/ethnic populations in the United States, in general, have less access to quality health care and behavioral healthcare services than the Caucasian population. They face barriers to access health care access, and experience higher rates of chronic diseases and complications with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, HIV, and obesity. Increasing the number of racial/ethnic physicians is one way to build trust, provide patient-centered and cultural quality care, and attract racial/ethnic patients to healthcare services. However, the inherent structural racism of medicine and implicit bias of physicians makes this challenging. In this collection of stories from racial/ethnic physicians, trainees, and other health care providers, authors focus on the trauma they have experienced with racist patients and colleagues during their careers, yet discuss how what they have learned is important for medical education for other healthcare providers like them.