Malika Fair is a new mother. She’s an African American. She’s a practicing physician. And, she’s the senior director of health equity partnerships and programs at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), as well as an associate clinical professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine of the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C.
All of which gives her a pretty panoramic perspective on how Black people are treated by the healthcare system in the U.S. One common practice that deeply concerns Dr. Fair is called “race-norming,” which refers to the adjustment of medical test results or medical risk assessments based on a patient’s race. In other words, if you’re Black , you might score differently than you would if you are white with the identical or similar set of symptoms simply because of the color of your skin.