Re-Centering Medical Education: A Social Justice Resource List
A project of the in-Training Classroom
Created by Livy Low and Maya Sandler
Throughout history, the field of medicine has taught its students to pathologize bodies deemed as Other. As we begin to confront these lineages, many people remained pushed to the edges of priority. In reality, those who are commonly viewed as marginal to society represent a major core of the American patient population. This resource list asks us to re-center those who are seen as distinct, as special cases—people of color, queer and transgender/non-binary folks, people with disabilities, etc.—and place them at the forefront of our minds and practice as future or current physicians. We share this document with the claim that the following topics, issues, and histories are not supplementary, but rather fundamental to the study of medicine.
Below, you will find many books, articles, videos, and more to draw upon. We assigned categories for ease of access, though we hope you recognize that an intersectional framework creates several crucial avenues for overlap. By drawing medicine into conversation with literature, history, art, and critical theory, we hope to expand the possibilities of what medical pedagogy could look like. This list presents a mere sampling of the kinds of work and discourse that already exist, and we hope to both provide both points of entry as well as expansion to reach those at various levels of engagement. These resources are not endorsements, but rather opportunities for critical thinking and discussion. Our goal is to offer this as a tool for individual learning, official and unofficial curriculum, and advocacy at your respective institutions.
If you have feedback, thoughts, or would like to otherwise get in touch, please email livy.low@gmail.com.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Intersectional Analysis as Foundation
Queer & Transgender Health
Disability, Bodies, and Illness
Immigration Rights & Health
Injustice in Healthcare & Science
BOOKS
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa
This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe Moraga
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
ARTICLES
Crenshaw, K. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, 1991 (43):1241. Link.
The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement.” Link.
Kimberle Crenshaw, “Why intersectionality can’t wait.” Link.
s.e. smith, “Push(back) at the Intersections: Defining (and Critiquing) Intersectionality.” Link.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, “Making Meaning of Decolonising.” Link.
Hansen H, Metzl JM. “Structural Competency in the U.S. Healthcare Crisis: Putting Social and Policy Interventions Into Clinical Practice.” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2016 (5): 1-5. Link.
Hansen H, Metzl JM, “Structural competency: Theorizing a new medical engagement with stigma and inequality” Social Science and Medicine 2014, 103(2): 126-133. Link.
VIDEOS
“The urgency of intersectionality,” a TED talk by Kimberle Crenshaw. Link.
“Kimberle Crenshaw Discusses Intersectional Feminism.” Link.
BOOKS
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Kindred by Octavia Butler
The Next American Revolution by Grace Lee Boggs
Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia
Protest Psychosis by Jonathan Metzl
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea J. Ritchie
People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier by Ruha Benjamin
Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation by Beth Ritchie
Structural Intimacies: Sexual Stories in the Black AIDS Epidemic by Sonja Mackenzie
Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice by Julie Sze
Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson
Medicating Race by Anne Pollock
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown by Nayan Shah
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
White Rage by Carol Anderson
ARTICLES
Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” Link.
Emma Ketteringham, “Live in a Poor Neighborhood? Better Be a Perfect Parent.” Link.
Abby Goodnough, “Finding Good Pain Treatment Is Hard. If You’re Not White, It’s Even Harder.” Link.
Olga Khazan, “Not White, Not Rich, Seeking Therapy.” Link.
Kimberly Foster, “Ericka Hart wants to make sure privileged white women aren’t the face of breast cancer.” Link.
Jennifer Tsai, “A Lack of Care: Why Medical Students Should Focus on Ferguson.” Link.
Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne, “The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place.” Link.
Teju Cole, “The White-Saviour Industrial Complex.” Link.
Jennifer Pan, “Beyond the Model Minority Myth.” Link.
Ijeouma Oluo, “White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves.” Link.
E. Armstrong, et al. 2006. “Whose Deaths Matter?: Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 31(4). Link.
Metzl, JM and Roberts, D. “Structural Competency Meets Structural Racism: Race, Politics, and the Structure of Medical Knowledge.” American Medical Association Journal of Ethics 2014, 16(9): 674-90. Link.
VIDEOS
Dorothy Roberts, “The problem with race-based medicine.” Link.
Ava Duvernay, “The 13th,” a documentary. Viewable on Netflix. Link.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “the danger of a single story.” Link.
OTHER
Black Lives Matter syllabus. Link.
Standing Rock syllabus. Link.
Charleston syllabus. Link.
Lemonade syllabus. Link.
“Still Processing,” a podcast by Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris. Link.
“Another Round,” a podcast by Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton. Link.
“Medicine and Mistrust on Native American Reservations” by WNYC Studios. Link.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Notion of Family. Link.
Carrie Mae Weems, Kitchen Table Series. Link.
BOOKS
The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care by Zena Sharman (Editor)
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel A. van der Kolk
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community by Laura Erickson-Schroth (Editor)
Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade
Against Purity by Alexis Shotwell
ARTICLES
Janani Balasubramanian, “Do no harm: queer patients and the med school closet.” Link.
Cari Mugo, “Critical Conditions: For Trans Individuals, Seeking Medical Care Can Be a Minefield.” Link.
Kai Cheng Thom, “6 Ways the Healthcare Industry Needs to Stop Abusing Trans People.” Link.
Senti Sojwal, “The Feministing Five: Ericka Hart.” Link.
Julie Beck, “What Doctors Don’t Know About LGBT Health.” Link.
Asiel Adan Sanchez, “The whiteness of ‘coming out’: culture and identity in the disclosure narrative.” Link.
Hugh Ryan, “Power in the Crisis: Kia LaBeija's Radical Art as a 25 Year Old, HIV Positive Woman of Color.” Link.
Livy Low, “What M.D. Students Should Know About Treating LGBTQ Youth Affected by Violence.” Link.
Queer Theory Reading List by Brown University LGBTQ Center. Link.
Women, Queer, and Trans* of Color Geneologies: Theories, Practices and Community Research: a syllabus. Link.
Focus on Transgender Health in the American Journal of Public Health, February 2017. Link.
Articles found in Journal of Transgender Health. Link.
Susan Parenti, “Redesigning the Care Actor.” Link.
VIDEOS
“Hello Beautiful | Ericka Hart [a kinky, poly, cancer-warrior, activist, sexuality educator and performer].” Link.
“How can queer women get the sexual health care they deserve? | Asking for a Friend” by Fusion. Link.
OTHER
Lambda Legal: “When Health Care Isn’t Caring: Lambda Legal’s Survey on Discrimination Against LGBT People and People Living with HIV.” Link.
Centers for Disease Control: LGBT Health. Link.
Healthy People 2020: LGBT Health. Link.
LGBT Terminology by UCLA. Link.
National LGBT Health Education Center, a program of The Fenway Institute. Link.
Strong Families: “Where to Start, What to Ask: A Guide for LGBT People Choosing Health Care Plans.” Link.
“The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding.” Link.
The Fenway Institute: “How to Gather Data on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Clinical Settings.” Link.
Callen Lorde Community Health Center. Link.
Apicha Community Health Center. Link.
The Ali Forney Center. Link.
The Audre Lorde Project. Link.
Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Link.
List of ‘small, progressive, grassroots and/or underfunded’ LGBT organizations across the country. Link.
Affirmation cards for LGBT youth. Link.
Q Card Project. Link.
Rest for Resistance by QTPOC Mental Health (Facebook group). Link.
BOOKS
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer
Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children by Laura Mauldin
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare
Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
Sex and Disability by Robert Muer and Anna Mollow
Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions by Christopher Bell
Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz
A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain by Christina Crosby
The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies by Andrea Elizabeth Shaw
ARTICLES
Johanna Hedva, “Sick Woman Theory.” Link.
Sins Invalid, “10 Principles of Disability Justice.” Link.
Nomy Lamm, “This is Disability Justice.” Link.
Christine Miserandino, “The Spoon Theory.” Link.
Carolyn Lazard, “How to be a Person in the Age of Autoimmunity.” Link.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “The Complexities of Cure Culture.” Link.
Joe Fassler, “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously.” Link.
Huzinga et al, 2009. “Physician Respect for Patients with Obesity.” Journal of General Internal Medicine. 24: 1236. Link.
O’Brien et al, “Reducing Anti-Fat Prejudice in Preservice Health Students: A Randomized Trial.” Obesity. 18(11): 2138–2144. Link.
Dickins et al, 2011. “The Role of the Fatosphere in Fat Adults' Responses to Obesity Stigma: A Model of Empowerment Without Focus on Weight Loss.” Qualitative Health Research. 21(21): 1679-1691. Link.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Becoming Disabled” New York Times, August 19, 2016. Link.
Rachel Anpach, “Why Disabled Youth Are More at Risk of Being Incarcerated.” Link.
Sally Tamarkin, “13 Experts Explain Why Diets Don't Work And What To Do Instead.” Link.
Your Fat Friend, “What Happens When One Fat Patient Sees a Doctor.” Link.
Lesley Kinsel, “Your Playstation Made You Fat, and other reductive narratives: Our problem with public health.” Link.
VIDEOS
“My Body Is a Prison of Pain so I Want to Leave It Like a Mystic But I Also Love It & Want it to Matter Politically.” Link.
OTHER
Sins Invalid. Link.
The Body is Not an Apology. Link.
“Popaganda: Women and Pain.” by Bitch Media. Link.
SURJ Disability and Access Toolkit. Link.
First, Do No Harm: a blog of ‘real stories of fat prejudice in health care.’ Link.
BOOKS
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
Reproducing Race by Khiara Bridges
Abortion After Roe by Johanna Schoen
Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers: Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care, and the Birth Weight Paradox by Alyshia Galvez
How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump by Laura Briggs
Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America by Alexandra Stern
addicted.pregnant.poor. by Kelly Ray Knight
Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America by Jeanne Flavin
Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Willie Parker
The Radical Doula Guide by Miriam Zoila Pérez
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Revolutionary Mothering by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Editor)
ARTICLES
Dorothy Roberts, “Reproductive Justice, Not Just Rights.” Link.
Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, “A New Vision for advancing our movement for reproductive health, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice.” Link.
Loretta Ross, “Understanding Reproductive Justice.” Link.
Nina Martin and Renee Montagne, “Nothing Protects Black Women from Dying in Pregnancy and Childbirth.” Link.
Victoria Law, “Reproductive Health Care in Women’s Prisons ‘Painful’ and ‘Traumatic.’” Link.
Sarah Jaffe, Mariame Kaba, Randy Albelda, and Kathleen Greir, “How to End the Criminalization of America’s Mothers.” Link.
Lisa Ko, “Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States.” Link.
Tavni Misra, “Why Some Women Don’t Actually Have Privacy Rights.” Link.
Dorothy Roberts, “Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers.” Link.
Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, “Reproductive Justice is Fundamentally an Economic Justice Issue.” Link.
Miriam Zoila Pérez, “Dr. Willie Parker is Putting Himself on the Line to Provide Abortions in the Deep South.” Link.
VIDEOS
“What is Reproductive Justice” by Groundswell. Link.
No Más Bebés documentary (short clips clips available: link).
“How racism harms pregnant women -- and what can help” by Miriam Zoila Perez. Link.
“The Midwives of Standing Rock.” Link.
OTHER
“Remembering Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey: The Mothers of Modern Gynecology” on NPR Hidden Brain. Link.
“The Supreme Court Ruling that Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations” on NPR Fresh Air. Link.
Barnard Center for Research on Women: “Reproductive Justice in Action.” Link.
Trust Black Women. Link.
Groundswell Fund. Link.
Sistersong. Link.
Forward Together. Link.
Guttmacher Institute. Link.
BOOKS
Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers: Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care, and the Birth Weight Paradox by Alyshia Galvez
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States by Seth Holmes
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande by Angela Garcia
Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History by Catherine Choy
How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts by Natalia Molina
Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America by Henry Yu
VIDEOS
Migration is Beautiful. Link.
Vice News: The High Cost of Deporting Parents. Link.
Sentenced Home, a full documentary. Link.
Documented (a clip from the documentary). Link.
OTHER
Reveal, “Sick on the inside: Behind bars in immigrant only prisons.” Link.
National Domestic Workers Alliance. Link.
#ImmigrationSyllabus. Link.
BOOKS
Healthcare for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930 by Beatrix Hoffman
Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America by Evelyn Nakano Glenn
People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier by Ruha Benjamin
Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge by Steven Epstein
Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research by Steven Epstein
Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State by Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein
Pain: A Political History by Keith Wailoo
ARTICLES
Ruha Benjamin, “Informed Refusal: Toward a Justice-Based Bioethics,” Science, Technology, and Human Values (2016). Link.
Soo Oh, “The future of work is the low-wage health care job.” Link.
Porfirio Quintano, “Health Care Workers Bring Sanctuary Movement into the Union.” Link.
Hill, Laurence D., and James L. Madara. “Role of the Urban Academic Medical Center in US Health Care.” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 294, no. 17 (November 2, 2005): 2219–20. Link.
Giselle Corbie-Smith, “The Continuing Legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Considerations for Clinical Investigation.” Link.