Special Episode: Tackling anti-Black racism in medicine

Efforts to combat anti-Black racism in Canadian healthcare are underway but much remains to be done to dismantle the ideas, systems and implicit biases that underpin this specific form of discrimination.

On this special one-hour episode, Drs Omole and Bigham explore the history of anti-Black racism in Canada’s medical schools, in particular at Queen’s University, where a ban on Black students was only formally lifted in 2018.

They also explore solutions, including the development of a curriculum at Queen’s aimed at addressing anti-Black racism. Drs. Omole and Bigham speak with Dr. Sabreena Lawal, a co-author of a paper in CMAJ entitled: Anti-Black racism and medical education: a curricular framework for acknowledging and learning from past mistakes.

They then explore the broad set of challenges still facing medicine in Canada and the efforts still needed to address anti-Black racism, with two Black physician leaders, Dr. Onye Nnorom and Dr. Kannin Osei-Tutu.

Dr. Osei-Tutu is an acute-care hospitalist physician in Calgary. He is the anti-racism and EDI Strategic Advisor to the CEO of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Dr. Nnorom is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and is the co-lead of the Black Health Education Collaborative, which played a major role in the CMAJ special issues on anti-Black racism.

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