BRATTLEBORO-As someone who has been a public health educator and advocate for many years, I appreciated Joyce Marcel's article, which illuminated racial disparities in health care caused by diagnostic tools that rely on technology. I also applaud the sources she quoted who are drawing attention to those disparities.
I'd be interested to read a follow-up article about differences in care that derive from racism in the medical profession in general, which is rife with race-based assumptions and stereotypes.
A variety of factors, many of which I've written about, contribute to these disparities, among them structural racism and implicit bias, which lead to variations in the quality of healthcare patients receive.
For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. In emergency rooms, Black women are often denied pain medication because they are assumed to be drug-seeking.
These statistics focus on women's health, but all people of color face challenges in healthcare settings that need to be illuminated. Given the racial and ethnic tensions in our society, it is important to educate the public about disparities in healthcare.
This information could serve to help patients self-advocate while also leading medical practitioners to check their own biases, and thereby avoid inflicting physical and emotional harm on their patients.
Elayne Clift
Brattleboro
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