In a recent Viewpoint in The Lancet, medical anthropology MD/PhD candidate Jessica Cerdeña and her co-authors propose race-conscious medicine as an alternative to race-based medicine to mitigate health inequities. Race-based medicine involves the flawed use of race as an essential, biological variable, which leads to inequitable care. Race-conscious medicine, by contrast, emphasizes racism, rather than race, as a key determinant of health. Cerdeña and her co-authors propose four actionable solutions across clinical practice, medical education, leadership, and research, calling upon the medical community to act especially amid recent highly visible murders of Black people and the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black and Brown communities.
Check out her work featured in Yale News and the Lancet