“To overcome the challenge of special interests that work against the conditions that create health, we need to extend the sphere of what we talk about when we talk about health so that our conversation includes factors like money, power, love, hate, culture, the environment, and politics.”

Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health (Sandro Galea, 2019)

As the United States faces unparalleled challenges due to COVID-19, racial disparities in health and healthcare have once again taken center stage. If effective interventions to address racial disparities in transplantation, including those magnified by COVID-19, are to be designed and implemented at the national level, it is first critical to understand the complex mechanisms by which structural, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized racism influence the presence of racial disparities in healthcare and transplantation. 

Policies that foster inequities at all levels (from organization to community to county, state, and nation) are critical drivers of structural inequities. The social, environmental, economic, and cultural determinants of health are the terrain on which structural inequities produce health inequities. These multiple determinants are the conditions in which people live, including access to good food, water, and housing; the quality of schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods; and the composition of social networks and nature of social relations.

Profound Conversations views racism not as an attribute of minority groups; rather, as an aspect of the social context and is linked with the differential power relations among racial and ethnic groups. Most studies of racism are based on African American samples; however, other populations may be at risk for manifestations of racism that differ from the African American experience. Asians, Hispanics, and, more recently, Arabs and Muslims are subject to similar inequitable opportunities in health and health care.

Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.life

The Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com