Oregon Health Forum, July 28, 2020
Racism in medicine is not just individual acts by individual people; it is embedded in our health care institutions. Join this discussion between Alan Weil, Editor-in-Chief of the prominent health care policy journal, Health Affairs, and Rachael Banks, Multnomah County Director of Public Health. They will dive into Alan Weil’s provocative editorial, “The Social Determinants of Death,” which spotlights how money and power maintain institutional racism in American health care.
Rachael Banks was appointed the county’s Public Health Director in 2017. She has focused on narrowing health disparities among communities of color since she joined the county in 2002. She began her career as a community health worker focused on prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and hepatitis. She later took on a broader role as a health educator to help public health staff better reach communities of color and others disproportionately impacted by health disparities.
Alan Weil is Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, the nation’s leading peer-reviewed health policy journal. Alan Weil was previously executive director of the National Academy for State Policy (NASHP), a non-partisan organization helping states achieve excellence in health policy and practice. Prior to that, Mr. Weil was director of the Urban Institute’s “Assessing the New Federalism” project which assessed changes in federal and state health, welfare, and social services programs.