Tag: Disparities

Person examining psilocybin mushrooms in lab.

Psychedelic Inequities and Unexplored Risk: Colonization, Commercialization, and Regulation

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff

By Tegan M. Carr

As a researcher studying the psychedelic experiences of people of color in hopes of driving equitable psychedelic health care, I’m concerned about the ways in which Black, Brown, and Indigenous contributions have been excluded in the development of the psychedelic field and investigation of novel psychedelic therapies. By excluding diverse contributions to the psychedelic field, we risk establishing psychedelic practices that exacerbate racial health inequities (disparities) in which people of color experience worse health outcomes as compared to whites on a population level. These patterns are already emerging in therapeutic psychedelic outcomes.

This piece identifies three interrelated topics that warrant scrutiny as drivers of psychedelic racial health inequities: the colonization of psychedelics, psychedelic commercialization & rent-seeking, and regulatory processes.

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(Institute for the feeble-minded, Lincoln, Ill. / Library of Congress)

Brittney Poolaw and the Long Tradition of State-Sponsored Control of Women and Their Fertility

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By Lauren Breslow

On October 5, 2021, a 20-year-old Native American woman, Brittney Poolaw, was convicted by an Oklahoma jury of manslaughter for the death of her 17-week-old, non-viable fetus.

Her conviction stands as a modern recapitulation of the historical violations that women, especially Black and Brown women, have endured regarding their fertility.

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Society or population, social diversity. Flat cartoon vector illustration.

Engendering Equity in Biomedical Research by Meeting Communities Where They Are

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By Rachele Hendricks-Sturrup

To address the root of both health disparities and community underrepresentation in biomedical research, it is mission-critical to teach early-stage career researchers how to empower underrepresented communities as partners in research while respecting and appreciating local history, context, and values.

As a researcher, I often encounter empirical studies in the literature that explore and experiment with institutionally– (versus community-) derived interventions that are meant to help boost underrepresented community engagement in biomedical research.

What if researchers took more time to intentionally harness their power and training to elevate, empower, and mobilize the voices of the communities they study to help design more impactful engagement interventions?

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Person receiving vaccine.

Why Do Differences in Clinical Trial Design Make It Hard to Compare COVID-19 Vaccines?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Written Description, where it originally appeared on June 30, 2021. 

By Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Nicholson Price, Rachel Sachs, and Jacob S. Sherkow

The number of COVID-19 vaccines is growing, with 18 vaccines in use around the world and many others in development. The global vaccination campaign is slowly progressing, with over 3 billion doses administered, although the percentage of doses administered in low-income countries remains at only 0.3%. But because of differences in how they were tested in clinical trials, making apples-to-apples comparisons is difficult — even just for the 3 vaccines authorized by the FDA for use in the United States. In this post, we explore the open questions that remain because of these differences in clinical trial design, the FDA’s authority to help standardize clinical trials, and what lessons can be learned for vaccine clinical trials going forward.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 06, 2020: A health care professional kneels in protest in New York City as part of the movement, 'White Coats for Black Lives,' during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scope Creep: Serving Many Roles, Health Care Providers Need a Supporting Cast

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Christian Rose

During the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians and nurses have found themselves on the frontlines of more than just medical care, advocating for their patients, their families, and themselves. Facing overwhelm and burnout at a scale hitherto unimagined, they continue to fulfill their ethical obligations to their communities and their patients. If they don’t, who will?

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Doctor Holding Cell Phone. Cell phones and other kinds of mobile devices and communications technologies are of increasing importance in the delivery of health care. Photographer Daniel Sone.

Providing Cancer Care in the Age of COVID-19

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Samyukta Mullangi, Johnetta Blakeley, and Stephen Schleicher

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many challenges to oncology care; an area of medicine that typically involves frequent, in-person patient visits to complete a course of treatment.

In many ways, COVID-19 has served as a stress test for the specialty, and has catalyzed adaptive changes that we hope will make the oncology care, and the health care system in general, more resilient going forward.

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Oxygen mask as part of artificial lungs ventilation machine in surgery room, closeup.

Pandemic Highlights Need for Quality and Equity in End-of-Life Care

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Elizabeth Clayborne

I was a little less than six months pregnant when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. As an Emergency Physician, I am well aware of additional risks that my job often exposes me to on a daily basis. We frequently face physical and emotional strife from unstable psychiatric patients, critically ill nursing home residents, sexual assault victims, and newly diagnosed cancer patients.

People who work in an emergency department tend to understand what comes with the territory: a lot of hard work, unexpected outcomes, and daily traverses of the human experience, from the best emotions you can imagine, to lowest depths of human despair. This is what accompanies caring for every ailment for people from all walks of life. I actually love this part about my job! I never know what I’m going to see when I walk through the doors.

That said, being a frontline physician during COVID-19 has provided me with a profoundly different lens on the pressures surrounding health care workers. And experiencing this while pregnant was pretty terrifying.

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Healthcare workers carrying signs protest for improved Covid-19 testing and workplace safety policies outside of UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles,Dec. 9, 2020.

Beyond 20/20: The Post-COVID Future of Health Care

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Cynthia Orofo

There are two experiences I will never forget as a nurse: the first time I had to withdraw care from a patient and the first day working on a COVID ICU.

Both were unforgiving reminders that the ICU is a demanding place of work that will stress you in every way. But the latter experience was unique for a few particular reasons. Before the end of that first shift, I had overheard several staff members on the floor speak about their fears, thoughts of the unknown, and their version of the “new normal.” As I realized that life would almost certainly not be the same, I developed my own vision of the “new normal” of health care.

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Emergency department entrance.

Pandemic Lays Bare Shortcomings of Health Care Institutions

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By Lauren Oshry

In 1982, when AIDS was first described, I was a first-year medical student in New York City, the epicenter of the epidemic in the U.S. To the usual fears of a medical student — fears of failing to understand, to learn, to perform — was the added fear of contracting a debilitating and universally fatal infection, for which there was no treatment. But our work felt urgent and valued, and the camaraderie among medical students and our mentors is now what I remember most.

Nearly forty years later, my experience as an attending oncologist during COVID-19 has been different. Yes, I am older and less naïve, but also this pandemic has been managed in fundamentally different ways. Aside from the obvious federal mismanagement, my own institution has deeply disappointed me. The institutional shortcomings we had long tolerated and adapted to were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and massively failed our patients and morally devastated those of us on the frontlines.

As a provider in a large safety net hospital, I care for a predominantly minority population in the lowest economic bracket. These would be the individuals disproportionately affected by COVID-19, with highest rates of infection and worse outcomes. My patients have the additional burden of cancer.

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