Friends, especially White friends, in academic medicine wondering what you can do and what issues you can advocate for. A non-comprehensive breakdown by specialty. I remind you that pledging to stop hate is not enough. What you do in this moment should make you uncomfortable.

All: Faculty should advocate for a *written* statement from their Deans stating: any med student arrested in connection with protests (for any reason, violent or nonviolent #CopsLie) will not be penalized, but will instead receive a letter of commendation for living their oath.

Medical students are one of many groups out here risking our lives. Will you risk writing an email to protect our professional futures?

#Neph: Find out how many Black people are denied kidney transplants by the race-adjusted eGFR at YOUR institution. Advocate for the elimination of that race-based medicine. That is a Black Lives Matter issue. @thenephrologist

#Neph: Find out if students at your institution, like mine @UABSOM, are taught that ACE inhibitors are not safe for Black people due to hereditary angioedema or are simply inefficacious. ACE inhibitors are renoprotective, lifesaving medicine. That is a Black Lives Matter issue.

#Cardio: Find out if students at your institution are taught, like mine @UABSOM, that beta-blockers don't work in Black people. Eliminate that race-based medicine.

#Pharm: Access to the complete pharmacopeia is a Black Lives Matter issue. Are the students you matriculate learning to treat the whole individual? Or are they taught myths of Black biological uniformity and pathology that reflexively deny lifesaving drugs?

#Endo/ #Peds: Find out how many Black girls are harmed by the differential diagnostic standard for early puberty at YOUR institution. And advocate for the elimination of that race-based medicine. That is a Black Lives Matter issue.

#Endo: Does your institution, like mine @uabmedicine @cctsnetwork , fund work on obesity that explores EXCLUSIVELY genetic bases for racial disparities in obesity?

If so, write a letter which delves into the many conceptual flaws in this framework, which locates pathology not in our societies, but in the bodies of individual Black people. A reminder: no one has ever found an allele that is found in all Black people and no White people.

No one ever will, for the simple and painfully obvious reason that 1 White person and 1 Black person can only produce a Black child. We live and die by the one drop rule. Read Naomi Zack's Philosophy of Science and Race and dig deeper.

#Med: Advocate for the creation of a ICD-10 code for experiences of chronic racism. That is a Black Lives Matter issue.

#ObGyn: Ask what your institution is doing to save Black mothers. The answer should not be implicit bias training. Read the wealth of work done by Black women and push for it to be taught and discussed at every meeting and seminar.
@mclemoremr

#Pathology: Advocate for the addition of a box on the standard US death certificate which marks death in custody. We don't actually know how many people the police kill every year because we have to rely on police to report. That is a Black Lives Matter Issue. @rmitch_jr

#Pulm: Find out how many Black people are harmed by differential spirometry standards at YOUR institution. Does it delay time to treatment? Access to transplant? Be the expert that answers those questions. That is a Black Lives Matter issue.
@LundyBraun @anandiyermd

#Pulm: Find out what the local environmental racism issues are in your community. What are you doing to address the pollution which inequitably damages the lungs of Black ppl? Will you push for this issue to be taught in your medical school? These are Black Lives Matter issues.

#Pulm/ #InfectiousDisease: Address the scourge of tuberculosis that almost exclusively affects Black people and other minorities. We are trained to look for it in people caged in our inequitable criminal legal system. Go deeper. Ask why. That is a Black Lives Matter Issue.

#Cardio #Diabetes #Surg There is a Black amputation epidemic. What are you doing to improve treatment access for peripheral vascular disease? Save Black Legs. Save Black Lives. https://features.propublica.org/diabetes-amputations/black-american-amputation-epidemic/

All healthcare professionals see the burden of inequity. We are trained to think it is tragic but inevitable. If only we could improve social conditions. But that's a job for someone else, right? Consider that defunding the police could free up local monies for these very issues.

Will you exercise your privilege as a medical professional to go to YOUR City Hall and demand a society that funds prevention? Will you demand a state that doesn't rely exclusively on prisons and jails and cops to reduce violence?

Health inequities are violence. Look up your city budget. Does it address these forms of violence? Does it fit with your moral code? Enact your Hippocratic oath and go to City Hall. As a division. As a department. As an individual in a white coat. Just go.

#MedTwitter these 15 items are specific, actionable #BlackLivesMatter causes you can address within medicine. March, donate, but above all else, look in your own house #WhiteCoatsForBlackLives

Add your own!