Efforts to meet the demand for organs have long had disproportionate effects on members of particular races, not only because of disparate levels of need for transplants but because of the way our donation system works.
Disparities in children’s mental health care could be addressed through expansion of school-based programs via passage of the Mental Health in Schools Act.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(12):1218-1224. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.12.pfor1-1612.
Reducing racial disparities in pain treatment requires an interdisciplinary approach to identifying causes of racial biases and teaching health care professionals to recognize and reduce them.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):221-228. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.medu1-1503.
Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Dorothy E. Roberts, JD
The call for structural competency encourages medicine to broaden its approach to matters of race and culture so that it might better address both individual-level doctor and patient characteristics and institutional factors.
Medical school admission committees can act within current legal guidelines to identify and recruit students from groups that are underrepresented in medicine.
PRIME-LC is a 5-year, dual-degree program at the University of California, Irvine Medical School that educates physician activists to serve in poor Latino communities.
Trainees’ expectations and cultural awareness should be managed, and their activities supervised, to create a global health elective that benefits both visiting students and the host country.