White Coats for Black Lives advocates that American medicine address racial inequities in health and health care by promoting diversity, eliminating implicit racial bias in the physician workforce, and advocating for equitable social structures.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):978-982. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.sect1-1510.
Nonmaleficence must not be sacrificed in the name of the patient’s autonomy, but there is no need to undertake needlessly invasive treatments for a small boost in protection against cancer recurrence if the patient does not wish to do so.
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.
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.
The widespread perception that Jewish law unequivocally demands that all measures must be taken to prolong the life of a dying patient, even if they will prolong dying or cause suffering, is incorrect.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.