{"id":6067,"date":"2017-01-12T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=6067"},"modified":"2017-01-09T10:59:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T15:59:18","slug":"teaching-medical-students-to-rethink-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2017\/01\/12\/teaching-medical-students-to-rethink-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Medical Students To Rethink Race"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Tim Sackton, Flickr CC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sociology thoroughly embraces the \u201csocial construction\u201d of race — that the ways we see, interpret, and act upon people\u2019s \u201crace\u201d are actually created and maintained because of social norms. This line of thinking hasn\u2019t caught on everywhere and\u00a0medicine —\u00a0especially since the completion of the Human Genome Project — often treats race as a biological, scientific category. This misunderstanding of race can have detrimental consequences, particularly when medical students are taught to use race as a shortcut for diagnosis. <\/span><\/p>\n

Law and sociology professor <\/span>Dorothy Roberts<\/span><\/a> described this problem to <\/span>Stat News<\/span><\/a>: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, students are learning an inaccurate and unscientific definition of race. It\u2019s simply not true that human beings are naturally divided into genetically distinct races. So it is not good medical practice to treat patients that way.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She goes on to explain the relationship between race and health: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that race is irrelevant to health, but it\u2019s not relevant to health because of innate differences. It\u2019s relevant because racism affects people\u2019s health.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sociologist and physician\u00a0<\/span>Brooke Cunningham<\/span><\/a> has taken a hands-on approach, giving lectures to first-year students at the University of Minnesota Medical School about race. She says,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been talking about race as a social construction for years and years and years and years and years and years and years. But there\u2019s been a slow uptake of that understanding in medicine.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cunningham teaches students about the history of racial categories, which have changed drastically over time and space, and she describes how stereotypes and misunderstandings of race have influenced medicine over time. With the lack of understanding regarding the\u00a0social construction of race in the medical profession, lectures like Cunningham\u2019s provide a key intervention in the future of health care and the treatment of patients of all races. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sociology thoroughly embraces the \u201csocial construction\u201d of race — that the ways we see, interpret, and act upon people\u2019s \u201crace\u201d are actually created and maintained because of social norms. This line of thinking hasn\u2019t caught on everywhere and\u00a0medicine —\u00a0especially since the completion of the Human Genome Project — often treats race as a biological, scientific […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,13,14],"tags":[39113,39110,40393,39111,40392],"class_list":["post-6067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-inequality","category-race","tag-health","tag-inequality","tag-medical-students","tag-race","tag-social-construction-of-race"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6067"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6075,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067\/revisions\/6075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}