Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Speaker and audience.Health inequality, especially racial inequality in health, has been a topic of concern in medicine since the 1990s. While there is some acknowledgment of how racism operates in the clinical context, the racialization of the “evidence” that guides clinical practice has been largely ignored. The Race, Medicine, and Social Justice Research Cluster of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice has been meeting regularly since 2014 to probe knowledge production and racism in medicine. The group identified and discussed many sites of racism in medicine over the last year: mental health for the under-insured; genetics, race, and health; black women’s maternity care; and algorithmic-based racism.  We also heard from medical students about the work they are doing to address racism in the medical curriculum.

Recent News

“There was a transnational flow of medical knowledge about how disease spread that increased between 1756 and 1866 and transpired not only at familiar hubs of medical research but also at sites of imperialism, slavery, war, and dispossession.” (Downs, Maladies of Empire, p. 5)
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The struggles of those who survive epidemics do not end when they leave the hospital, said Adia Benton ’99, an associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University.

At a talk hosted by the Simmons Center Tuesday, Benton discussed her experiences with survivors of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone — specifically, how the deadly disease brought the survivors new problems.
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News from the Simmons Center

COVID-19 Health Crisis Reveals Deep Impact of Societal Racism

Doctors on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis describe an unprecedented health emergency that has exposed the societal wounds among the poor and people of color that have persisted for centuries.
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Current and past affiliated staff, researchers, and fellows include

2020-2023

  • Lundy Braun

    Race, Medicine, and Social Justice Research Cluster Faculty Fellow, Royce Family Professor in Teaching Excellence, Professor of Africana Studies and Medical Science
  • Taneisha Wilson

    Race, Medicine, and Social Justice Research Cluster Faculty Fellow, Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine, Attending Physician, Brown Emergency Medicine, Director, Equity Initiatives, Brown Emergency Medicine

2020-2021

  • Nic John Ramos '17-'19

    Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Race and Medicine