NNLM Reading Club: Racism and Health
- Racism and Health
- Diversity in Medicine
- Becoming Dr Q
- Black Man in a White Coat
- The Beauty in Breaking
Racism and Health
America’s long, frequently uncomfortable conversation about racism and social justice continues, with both new and familiar voices speaking up. Health is very much a subtopic that needs to be considered in that discourse. Health depends on social factors, whether they are the condition of one’s neighborhood, the accessibility of good nutrition, or the education necessary to make informed choices about wellness. These things are not impervious to racism. Racism can reduce the length of lives or stop them before they start. It is indeed a public health crisis.
To be committed to equity in health, one must address racism’s impact on it. Bring your book-discussion group into one of the central conversations impacting our nation as the NNLM Reading Club focuses on Racism and Health. We encourage you to use these books to start a conversation or keep an existing one going. All voices are not always heard in such conversations. We urge you to listen, think critically about what you can do to alleviate the effect racism has on health equity, and act for social justice.
Health Equity
The primary NIH organization for research on Health Disparities is the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. NIMHD has recently launched a new section on its website that highlights recent research findings on minority health and health disparities by its grantees. Visit the Research Spotlights section for a quick glance at research that spans diverse topics affecting health disparity populations, such as maternal health and sexual and gender minority (SGM) mental health.
Resources
Use MedlinePlus, a free source of trustworthy and evidence-based health information from the National Library of Medicine, to further your understanding and locate resources about Health Disparities.
Race, Racism, and Health is a collection of research and perspectives on the effects of race and racism on health in the United States compiled by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health. Since 1972, they have supported research and programs targeting some of America’s most pressing health issues.
Fact Sheet: Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity by Sofia Carratala and Connor Maxwell, Center for American Progress, May 7, 2020
Race, Medicine, and Health in America is a Higher Education Module developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It is designed to instruct intersecting narratives of race, environment, and health through the use of selected case studies: including lead poisoning, asthma, the Environmental Injustice Movement, the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave, and Hurricane Katrina. It is divided into six class modules with reading resources and discussion questions.
Diversity in Medicine
Diversity in Medicine: Scholarly Articles
Start the Conversation
Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon by Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, MD, traces the author’s journey from a child in a Mexican village to a migrant farmworker in California to brain surgeon and researcher. Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflection on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy, MD, looks at how both Black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. Finally, The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir by Michele Harper, MD, recounts the experiences of an African American emergency room doctor amid personal struggles that include her history with an abusive father and racial conflict faced in the ER ward.
What does the research show?
Research is a quest for truth. The job of a researcher is to use the most trustworthy resources to report the most accurate information. The role of the consumer is to consult a variety of trustworthy sources to reduce the chance of relying on misinformation or biased opinions and facts.
MedlinePlus Guide to Healthy Web Surfing
PubMed
An article that is published in a scholarly journal is peer-reviewed by experts in the field and scrutinized for accuracy by a team of editors and fact-checkers. Peer-reviewed, scholarly articles are very trustworthy.
To find scholarly biomedical literature, use PubMed, a free, online bibliographic resource. The database contains more than 30 million citations and abstracts developed and maintained by the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Links to the full-text articles may be present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).
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Discussion
Discussion Guide for Becoming Dr Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
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Book
Today he is known as Dr. Q, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who leads cutting-edge research to cure brain cancer. But not too long ago, he was Freddy, a nineteen-year-old undocumented migrant worker toiling in the tomato fields of central California. In this gripping memoir, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa tells his amazing life story--from his impoverished childhood in the tiny village of Palaco, Mexico, to his harrowing border crossing and his transformation from illegal immigrant to an American citizen and gifted student at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard Medical School. Packed with adventure and adversity - including a few terrifying brushes with death - Becoming Dr. Q is a testament to persistence, hard work, the power of hope and imagination, and the pursuit of excellence. It's also a story about the importance of family, mentors, and giving people a chance.
14th International Latino Book Award for Best Biography
Becoming Dr Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon | Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa | University of California Press | 2011 | 328 pages | ISBN: 978-0520274563
Author
Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, MD, is a consultant and serves as chair of the Department of Neurologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic's campus in Florida, and he is recognized with the distinction of a named professorship, the William J. and Charles H. Mayo Professorship. In addition to his clinical activities, Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa leads NIH-funded research to find a cure for brain cancer. His cutting-edge research focuses on brain tumors and cell migration, health care disparities and clinical outcomes for neurosurgical patients in which the operating room is used as an extension for his research scenario. He has authored numerous high-impact scientific journal articles, chapters, abstracts and books.
NNLM Reading Club Presents...
Host Edgar Gil Rico of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health joined NNLM and our All of Us community partners for an afternoon with Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, MD to discuss his book, Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon.
Dr. Q, as he is known, shared his journey from a child in a Mexican village to a migrant farmworker in California to a world-renown brain surgeon and researcher. Dr. Q also answered audience questions.
NNLM Reading Club Book
Do you want to share this book with your reading group? The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) has made it easy to download the discussion questions and promotional materials.
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Discussion
Discussion Guide for Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflection on Race and Medicine
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Book
When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
New York Times Bestseller | Library Journal Best Book Selection | Booklist Editor's Choice Book Selection
Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflection on Race and Medicine | Damon Tweedy MD | Picador | Reprint 2016 | 304 pages | ISBN: 978-1250105042
Author
Damon Tweedy, MD, is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine. He is an associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and staff physician at the Durham Veteran Affairs Health System. He has published articles about race and medicine in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Raleigh News & Observer, as well as in various medical journals. He lives outside Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with his family.
Official Website of Damon Tweedy MD
Interview
NNLM Reading Club Book
Do you want to share this book with your reading group? The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) has made it easy to download the discussion questions and promotional materials.
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Discussion
Discussion Guide for The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir
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Book
An African American emergency room physician reflects on how “the chaos of emergency medicine” helped her come to terms with a painful past and understand the true nature of healing. Though Harper grew up a member of the Washington, D.C. “black elite,” the beautiful homes she shared with her parents held a dark secret: domestic violence. Determined to “fix people” rather than hurt them the way her abusive father hurt her family, Harper became an ER doctor. Her path was difficult. After she accepted her first post-residency job, the man she had met at Harvard and later married walked away from their relationship. Braving a life on her own in a new city, night shifts in an urban hospital, and the life-and-death dramas of the ER ward, Harper began a period of intense soul-searching. Observations of her patients and the struggles they faced taught her abundant lessons in human brokenness—especially her own—and resilience. A newborn baby whose death she could not explain helped her learn to open her heart and truly feel. A white male patient who had committed sexual assault on a female doctor forced the author to push past old memories of her father’s abuse and feelings of rage to see a human being in pain. A young black man brought to the ER ward by white police officers who unsuccessfully tried forcing him to submit to a medical examination for drugs reminded Harper of her own struggles as a black woman in an overwhelmingly white profession. It also made her realize that “America bears…many layers of racial wounds, both chronic and acute,” and that part of her purpose was to continue her fight to promote social healing. Tackling such painful subjects as domestic abuse, trauma, and racism with grace and wisdom, this eloquent book probes the human condition as it chronicles a woman’s ever-evolving spiritual journey.
New York Times Bestseller
The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir | Michele Harper, MD | Penguin Random House | 2020 | 304 pages | ISBN: 978-0525537380
Author
Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. The Beauty in Breaking is her first book.
Official Website of Michele Harper, MD
Interview
'There Are Constant Battles': Dr. Michele Harper Opens Up About Racism in the Emergency Room.People. July 7, 2020