Northwestern Public Health Review

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Dear Readers,

We are thrilled to present the 2024 edition of the Northwestern Public Health Review. This issue explores the health consequences of structural anti-Black racism. We highlight the work of several Black-American physicians and scholars, along with several programs and initiatives working to achieve greater racial equity. We, as an editorial board, recognize the enduring harm of structural anti-Black racism in public health and medicine and call on our readership to take actionable steps.

First, Dr. Kimberly Laughman and Dr. Nevert Badreldin describe racial disparities in maternal mortality. They emphasize the origins in anti-Black racism and the social construct of race and offer solutions to address racial gaps in maternal mortality. Dr. Nia Heard-Garris then contributes her perspective as a pediatrician, studying how racism experienced during childhood impacts health outcomes. She emphasizes the importance of health equity scholarship in addressing known health disparities and offering evidence-based solutions to policymakers. Both pieces highlight the impact of structural inequities on health outcomes.

We then include an interview with internal medicine physician Dr. Muriel Jean-Jacques, who addresses persistent racial disparities during annual flu vaccinations. She explains the reasons for these inequities and offers strategies for combating them, drawing connections to the early stages of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Finally, Dr. Dinee Simpson, a transplant surgeon, describes racial gaps in kidney disease and access to organ transplantation. She describes how patients fall out of the transplant process due to structural racism and how she founded the African American Transplant Access Program (AATAP) at Northwestern Medicine. Both articles comment on community distrust in the healthcare system and offer approaches for healthcare providers to restore patient-physician trust.

At the end, we also include brief features of three programs and initiatives at Northwestern seeking to address the harmful effects of anti-Black racism in medicine and public health: the Center for Health Equity Transformation (CHET), the Student to Resident Institutional Vehicle for Excellence (STRIVE) program, and the Program in Public Health’s (PPH) coursework on structural racism. CHET uses research, community engagement, and educational programming to address health disparities and train future healthcare professionals and public health practitioners. The STRIVE program aims to improve access to and representation within medical education by offering medical students with marginalized identities mentorship from residents and fellows who are similarly underrepresented in medicine. PPH began offering a course on structural racism in 2021, stimulating discussion and growth among students and faculty. These programs serve as examples of how we can address the effects of structural racism on health and wellbeing through training, mentorship, and education.

We thank everyone who contributed to this important edition, including the students of the University of Illinois at Chicago Biomedical Visualization program for their incredible illustrations that accompany the writing throughout this issue. We wish to especially acknowledge the Black scholars, physicians, editors, illustrators, and supporters that brought this edition of NPHR to fruition. Developing this issue during the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice movement was a labor of love, and we are excited to finally share it with our readers.

In Health,

The NPHR Editors-in-Chief
Grace Bellinger, PhD, MPH
Joo-Young Lee, MD
Meilynn Shi