How much time do we need for progress?

I’m @Christine Mehta. Welcome to Harvard Public Health Weekly—a newsletter bringing you the best ideas and commentary on public health.

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This week in Harvard Public Health

Societal change rarely happens overnight. But changing an ingrained ill like racism is particularly glacial. James Baldwin asked in 1989, “how much time do you want?” Today, would we be able to answer him any differently??

We would not, says health researcher Rachel Hardeman. She says incremental steps toward progress are not enough to eradicate structural racism. In a powerful call-to-action, she argues the public health field must play a larger role in finding solutions to racism’s malignancy. If we want to get rid of the tumor, we must first find and study it better.

Hardeman is doing just that. In February 2021, she founded the Center for Anti-Racism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota, which seeks to dismantle racism’s impact on health and health care. Hardeman calls for drawing on history and geography and finding new sources of data to close the racial health gap.

Read the full essay.

You’re invited! Join us next week

Can Reparations Close the Racial Health Gap?: November 3rd @ 9-5 pm ET (in-person only) Are you Boston-based? Join us for a free, day-long symposium at Harvard Medical School: “Can reparations close the racial health gap?” on Thursday, November 3. The event will feature leading scholars, policy makers, and community organizers examining how to redress centuries of anti-Black racism and close the troubling racial gaps in health outcomes and life expectancy. Expect an engaging and interactive day. Just a note the event will be in-person only.?

Review?the program?and register here:?https://bit.ly/3LVt0p3

The Fight For Equity: November 4th @ 10–11 am ET (virtual and in-person) Institutional and individual bias can mean you’re treated differently depending on the color of your skin. The result: Huge racial disparities in health outcomes and life expectancy. How can we address these inequities? Our panelists will explore new approaches to closing racial health gaps and discuss efforts to dismantle racism in health care.

This event is presented in partnership by Harvard Public Health magazine and the Harvard Chan Studio.?

Go to the event page to learn more and register here (required for in-person attendees): https://bit.ly/3W69VFl

On my reading list…

I just picked up Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book, “Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human.” As Jennifer Szalai of the New York Times put it in her review: “some of the writing…is so lovely that you can get caught up in its music.”

If you’re looking for something on the shorter side, check out this dispatch from Amy Pickering, a postdoctoral researcher who figured out how to better disinfect drinking water in communities without access to clean water.?Pickering’s work made me revisit Evan Thomas’s article for HPH on how leveraging markets and technology like Pickering’s could expand access to clean water.

That’s all for this week…

As always, my inbox is open. Send me your comments, musings, and suggestions. We’ll be launching an email version of our newsletter in the not-so-distant future. Sign up on?our website.

See you next week,?

Christine

P.S. Learn more about us at?www.harvardpublichealth.org.