Informatics and Anti-Black Racism: What We Need to Do

This episode focuses on the issues surrounding George Floyd and anti-black racism, and what we in informatics can do to combat this issue that's finally been thrust into the light where enough Americans can see it that they are calling for action.  (Thank you, America. Better late than never.)

Special thanks to our guests!  Dr. Arie Nettles is Professor of Pediatrics, and the Director, Office of Inclusion and Health Equity, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. 

Dr. Nancy Lorenzi  is Professor of Biomedical Informatics, and Clinical Professor of Nursing at Vanderbilt University. She is also Vice President for Strategic Change Management at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.  She is a world expert on organizational dynamics and how to change structures and processes. 

Dr. Yaa Kumah Krystal is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics. Yaa is a thoughtful, articulate and experienced black woman, who is wildly creative and offers a lot of insights during this conversation.

Philip Adejumo is a soon-to-be medical student at Yale, where he will be pursuing an MD and PhD at the same time. Oh, and he’s a swimmer and has qualified for the summer Olympics. 

Dr. Patty Brennan is one of the most visible and most influential biomedical informatics experts in the world. The WORLD!  She’s director of the National Library of Medicine, and in that role, as well as in her previous roles in academia, she has been a fierce proponent of personalized care, health equity, and the importance of social and behavioral determinants of health in developing socio-technical systems.  

We covered some very visceral and at times, frustrating topics.  I don’t want to give ANYTHING away on this one, folks. It’s worth the ride.  The one thing I will say is that it’s not just about the usual topics of bias in data, more papers about how to help subpopulations in our community become resilient. Not that these aren’t important, but we went somewhere much deeper, much more generalizable, and way beyond just what we in informatics can do.  I for one, have some very clear marching orders based on this podcast.   

Listen to this one twice—once where you listen to podcasts, and once at a place where you keep your to-do list. You CAN and will make a difference if you heed even one piece of advice from this episode.