The AMA plan calls for more than diversifying its staff and adding members who are from Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and LGBTQ communities. It aims to embed anti-racist activities and education at every level of the organization.
‘’We’re going to be holding ourselves accountable,’’ said Dr. Aletha Maybank, AMA’s chief health equity officer.
The influential advocacy group also plans to use its clout to advocate for health equity government policies and to create and deliver anti-racist training for medical students, doctors and health systems.
Credit: AP
In this Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, a doctor wears a stethoscope around his neck as he tends to patients in his office in Illinois. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest association of and lobby group for doctors, says it’s taking on racial disparities in health care with a plan to dismantle structural racism in its own ranks and across the U.S. medical establishment.
Leaders of the AMA, whose headquarters is on North Wabash Avenue in River North, say they’re aiming to “pivot from ambivalence to urgent action” on health inequities.
Though the new, 83-page report has been in the works for more than a year, the group says the coronavirus pandemic, high-profile police brutality cases and recent race-based crimes have given the effort a sense of urgency.
US doctors group issues anti-racism plan for itself, field
LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
May 11, 2021
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1of3FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, a doctor wears a stethoscope around his neck as he tends to patients in his office in Illinois. On Tuesday, May 11, 2021, the American Medical Association released a comprehensive plan aimed at dismantling structural racism inside its own ranks and within the U.S. medical establishment.Jeff Roberson/APShow MoreShow Less
2of3FILE - This Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2015 file photo shows Dr. Raymond Givens at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. On Tuesday, May 11, 2021, the American Medical Association released a comprehensive plan to dismantle structural racism inside its own ranks and within the U.S. medical establishment. ‘’People are dying on a daily basis from the same structural racism that they are now acknowledging,’’ Givens says. ‘’Given that, there’s a need to
Lindsey Tanner
FILE - This Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2015 file photo shows Dr. Raymond Givens at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. On Tuesday, May 11, 2021, the American Medical Association released a comprehensive plan to dismantle structural racism inside its own ranks and within the U.S. medical establishment. ââPeople are dying on a daily basis from the same structural racism that they are now acknowledging,ââ Givens says. ââGiven that, thereâs a need to act as quickly as is responsible.ââ (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) May 11, 2021 - 1:58 PM
The nationâs largest doctors group Tuesday released a comprehensive plan aimed at dismantling structural racism inside its own ranks and within the U.S. medical establishment.
Medicine is billed as a field guided by extensive research and evidence. But the specter of race reared its head in the field earlier this year when a top editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association posited that structural racism doesn’t exist in health care.
The controversial commentary came during a podcast and led to a shakeup of the journal’s leadership. It also sparked a petition and inspired debate on social media.
It came just over two months after another controversy swarmed over how the health care industry prioritizes people of color.
Susan Moore, a 52-year-old Black internist in Indianapolis, shed a light on the disparate treatment of Black patients in December when she recorded a dying message from a hospital room where she said she was getting inadequate treatment for COVID-19. Moore said she was made to feel like a drug addict when she asked her doctor for medication to ease her “intense pain.” The physician claimed nurses and doctors were ignor