Underserved communities are disproportionately becoming zoned as food deserts as access to grocery stores becomes limited.
The body always remembers. Like other children of Vietnamese war refugees, I understand how hardships and inconceivable loss leave marks. Psychologists in the 1990s found roughly half of Holocaust survivors were still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience). Emerging studies show that, in communities of survivors, trauma may also be passed onto subsequent generations through epigenetic changes, where the mechanism by which our body reads DNA – not DNA itself – is altered (Stanford University). This intergenerational transfer can also be behavioral; parents with severe anxiety may model detrimental patterns of thinking and feeling.
Addressing the racial and geographic disparities that make PrEP less accessible.
The Body Mass Index, a tool integrated into the U.S. healthcare system, was created from research that was deeply flawed and exclusive.
Systemic racism is pervasive. It's just as present in our criminal justice system as it is in our healthcare and education system.
Over the past year, the global pandemic has highlighted the vast racial disparities in medical treatment in the U.S. Many of its elements are more subtle; difficult to see if you don’t experience it first-hand. But some are more blatant – like racial correction factors. In medicine, equations and algorithms can often be used to diagnose or screen patients. Racial correction factors are when physicians adjust the measurements or risk calculations for patients based on their race. Despite the fact that race is a social construct, many medical providers hold on to the idea of race as a biological variable. This has a severe, sometimes fatal impact on people of color.
The death by suicide of former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst has placed a focus on Black mental health, the systemic inequities that affect it, and the stigma around getting help.
American vaccine “charity” comes too late for those who died because the U.S. blocked vaccine imports.
Healthcare issues were a major topic in 2021, causing communities around the U.S. to demand action to fix these inequities in the healthcare system.
