For many physicians, lack of understanding about brain death leads to confusion and muddles interactions with patients’ loved ones at the end of life.

Since 1995, the American Academy of Neurology has provided guidelines for brain death determination, but nationwide adherence to these guidelines has been incomplete.

Lobbying, maintaining diagnostic skill, participating in national societies, and contributing to robust discourse can influence practice and policy.

Criteria in statutes and tests used to diagnose brain death don’t always jibe, and this can undermine public trust in death pronouncements.

Dr Ariane Lewis discusses how we can navigate uncertainty and ambiguity about brain death by understanding clinical criteria for brain death determination and how our approaches to death are culturally and socially situated.

Patients’ adherence to recommendations can unjustly influence their candidacy for a current intervention.

Critical race theory tools of evaluating stock characters and counter stories can help clinicians and researchers illuminate experiences of those at the margins.

Medicine has always maintained social, political, and economic structures that have exacerbated Black and Brown persons’ lived embodiment of racism.

More cesarean deliveries among Black and Hispanic women in the United States has long demonstrated racial inequity in obstetrical care.

Raciolinguistic hierarchies can undermine the quality of Latinx patients’ health experiences.