Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care

Dayna Bowen Matthew

Nov 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Diana Blue

About this audiobook

Health disparities have remained stubbornly entrenched in the American health care system-and in Just Medicine Dayna Bowen Matthew finds that they principally arise from unconscious racial and ethnic biases held by physicians, institutional providers, and their patients. Implicit bias is the single most important determinant of health and health care disparities. Because we have missed this fact, the money we spend on training providers to become culturally competent, expanding wellness education programs and community health centers, and even expanding access to health insurance will have only a modest effect on reducing health disparities. We will continue to utterly fail in the effort to eradicate health disparities unless we enact strong, evidence-based legal remedies that accurately address implicit and unintentional forms of discrimination, to replace the weak, tepid, and largely irrelevant legal remedies currently available. Our continued failure to fashion an effective response that purges the effects of implicit bias from American health care, Matthew argues, is unjust and morally untenable. In a time when the health of the entire nation is at risk, it is essential to confront the issues keeping the health care system from providing equal treatment to all.

About the author

Dayna Bowen Matthew is the dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. Dr. Matthew is a leader in public health and civil rights law who has also held many public policy roles.

Diana Blue received her BFA in drama from Hofstra University and her MA in theater education from Emerson College. She is a classically trained actor, choreographer, and voice performer who resides in Connecticut. Additionally, she is passionate in her work as a K-12 theater educator and director.