It’s Tuesday, so a good day to remind everyone there’s no genetic basis to races. Race is a poor proxy for ancestry & based on pseudo scientific views from the 18th century, which have been the cause of much harm.

When we use race as a marker of ancestry in our diagnostic & treatment algorithms, we may be further entrenching health inequalities, causing more harm https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2004740

When we see racial disparities in health outcomes, we are seeing the impact of racism not race. There’s no gene that is shared by black or brown people that make them inherently weaker or more susceptible to disease in every health area. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200630.939347/full/

Racism can make people unwell https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/racism-making-us-ill-prejudice

Racism can affect health in many different ways. This is a useful diagram, which shows the pathways from Paradies et al

…https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2046-4053-2-85

thanks to @AmeenKam for introducing me to this

And structural racism increases the likelihood of disease in many health areas. Here’s a list of racial inequalities in the UK https://twitter.com/crageshri/status/1267821605847044110

As we start to see ethnic minority groups being disproportionately affected by COVID-19 again, it would be good to see discussions about the structural issues like racism that increase their risk, & not “their culture or behaviours”. https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1307632918790111237