International and Domestic Health Equity and Leadership (IDHEAL) UCLA Emergency Medicine

IDHEAL Education

IDHEAL Suggested Reading List

Anti-Racism: Racism and Society
This book is a great introduction to conversations about race, including explanations of basic terminology like intersectionality and microaggressions.
How To Be An Antiracist
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
In this book, Kendi elaborates the concept of antiracism and interweaves anecdotes from his own experience to illustrate concepts how racist and antiracist policy impact our society.
DiAngelo describes how white racial insulation that leads whites to lack the stamina and skills to productively engage in conversations about race and racism. She then gives steps for how whites can build their own capacity and skills to begin to contribute to racial justice efforts.
Alexander describes how the U.S. system of mass incarceration is essentially a re-design of former Jim Crow laws in disproportionately targeting and impacting African Americans. She argues that disrupting mass incarceration must be a principle step in achieving racial justice. (There is also a Spanish language version available “El Color de la Justicia” with a preface on how the same phenomenon impacts Latinos.)
Just Mercy
Bryan Stevenson
This is the memoir of the early work of lawyer Bryan Stevenson who directs the Equal Justice Initiative. He describes his efforts to defend young black men who have been wrongly accused and held on death row and through his description reveals the racial injustice in our legal system.
Anti-Racism: Racism in Medicine
This is the landmark work of the Institute of Medicine documenting pervasive disparities in health care between racial and ethnic groups in the United States, rooted specifically in the clinical encounter.
This book is a detailed examination of the myth of the biological concept of race and how it continues to impact our society.
This is a comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans that provides context for the deep-rooted mistrust of the medical establishment.
This book chronicles the lives of the offspring of Henrietta Lacks, whose tumor cells, taken without her knowledge, became the famous HeLa cell line used throughout medical research. It is a deep dive into the repercussions of experimentation detailed in Medical Apartheid (above) on one family and its future generations.
This book is an ambitious plan for a legal remedy to end racial disparities in U.S. health care. Bowen Matthew elucidates changes that could be made to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that would hold health care organizations accountable for disparate health outcomes between racial groups.
Anti-Racism: Implicit Bias in Medicine
This article explains that physician bias contributes to health disparities and provides strategies to begin to address and mitigate physicians' biases.
This article explains the cognitive origins of implicit, or unconscious bias, and why it is pervasive even among physicians with minimal expressed biases. These biases impact medical decision making, which can be addressed through conscious thought. Increasing the representation of African American physicians, who show less implicit racial bias, cannot be overlooked as a strategy to address health disparities.
Global Health
Introduction to Global Health Ethics
Pinto & Upshur
Introductory
This is a case-based discussion of ethical challenges in global health. The chapter on perspectives from the global south is particularly insightful.
Reimagining Global Health
Farmer, et al.
Introductory
This is one of the only complete introductions to the history and context of global health initiatives.
The Lassa Ward
Ross Donaldson
Introductory
A memoir about a UCLA medical student's first experiences with global health and humanitarian work. Each chapter explores global health themes and problems (e.g. corruption, HIV, etc.)
The 2013 Lancet special commission's report on the future of global health, written by several very prominent thinkers. They project where global health programming could take us by the year 2035.
The Bottom Billion
Paul Collier
In Depth
This work presents the idea of global economic "poverty traps" that countries fall into and how global institutions can help release them.
Disease Control Priority Project
DT Jamison, et al.
In Depth
Using the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) as the unit of economic analysis, this paper addresses how countries should approach disease control from a cost effectiveness standpoint. This is a good reference for global health students and an important economic concept to understand.
Development as Freedom
Amartya Sen
In Depth
A landmark discussion of how individual freedoms and economic development are intertwined.
Health and Human Rights
Health and Human Rights
Mann, et al.
Introductory
This paper introduces a framework for understanding how work in health and human rights can be collaborative and are interdependent in the advancement of either field.
No Más Bebés
Tajima-Peña
In Depth
This documentary shares the story of a group of immigrant women who sued LAC+USC for involuntary sterilization during childbirth. This is a particularly important to understand the local history of community trust in Los Angeles County public hospitals.
Pathologies of Power
Paul Farmer
In Depth
This work uses examples from the work of Partners in Health to illustrate the correlation between the lack of social and economic rights to illness and the relationship to human rights.
A brief description of structural racism and its role in medical care that serves as a call to action for physicians. The impact on health outcomes for minority patients is discussed.
A physician anthropologist and ethnographer from Berkeley, who has written extensively on migrant issues and has actually crossed the border with undocumented research subjects, gives an account of border crossings and the health risks associated with them.
Public Health and Human Rights
Beyrer and Pizer
In Depth
Instead of the more traditional legal approach to health and human rights, this book emphasizes the interplay of human rights and impact on health from a public health/epidemiological perspective, and explores evidence-based approaches to addressing abuses. Many of the book's chapter writers are currently working in the field, as opposed to in academia, lending the work a distinct perspective.
Social Determinants of Health
Unnatural Causes
Introductory
This four-part series of documentaries by PBS focuses on shattering the assumptions and beliefs that individuals have about what contributes to our overall well being. It eloquently illustrates that health is inextricably tied to the environments in which we are born and how power and wealth - and their lack thereof - affect not just access to care but also our ability to be healthy at a cellular level.
Marmont synthesizes his prior work and that of others to argue that not just poverty but inequality drives ill health.
The author presents a theoretical framework for understanding racism and guides the learner on the application of this framework to health disparities. Students with little background on conventional theoretical frameworks for evaluating disparities will find this useful.
Race, Racial Inequalities, and Health Inequalites
Smedley, et al.
In Depth
Sub Category: Race
A basic overview of health disparities, race, and institutional and structural racism is given.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
In Depth
Sub Category: Race
A forcefully -written account of how America has merely replaced the racial caste system with and equally devastating system of social control and mass incarceration. What separates this book from others is the evidence that the author uses to support her claims.
Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life
DW Sue, et al.
In Depth
Sub Category: Race
Racial micro aggressions, ubiquitous in nature, are defined and classified and their contribution to the perpetuation of inequalities discussed.
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
Jill Leovy
In Depth
Sub Category: Violence
Account of the epidemic of homicide in South Central Los Angeles and its impact on the community.
A great randomized controlled trial that examines the cost-efficacy of providing housing for homeless people with health problems versus the standard of care.
A randomized controlled trial conducted in Chicago that shows the effects of housing on health and healthcare utilization.
USDA Food Desert Map
In Depth
Sub Category: Food Security
Interactive map that allows you to look at specific areas in the United States and evaluate for food access indicators for low income populations.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Anne Fadiman
In Depth
Sub Category: Culture
Anthropologic account of a Hmong child with seizures that demonstrates the disconnect between treating physicians and parents and the value judgement behind labeling patients or family non-compliant.
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