Health Wanted: Public Health and the Black Community

January 31, 2025
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HEALTH WANTED, a weekly radio show and podcast produced in partnership with WABE, brings need-to-know public health headlines and breaks down the science behind trending topics.

The Episode

The topic: Historically, health and medical systems have mistreated and exploited Black communities, and the impact of these injustices continues to affect Black health today. This week on Health Wanted, host Laurel Bristow and guest Matthew McCurdy discuss systemic racism, health disparities, and the important public health and medical contributions that Black scientists, doctors, and everyday people have made to public health.

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The takeaway: Black health has a painful history, and the lasting effects of past mistreatment by the health care system, along with the impact of ongoing systemic racism, continue to drive racial health disparities today.

  • The fields of medicine and public health have a history of exploiting Black people through unethical experimentation. Many medical tools and procedures, like in gynecological surgeries, were developed using Black bodies without consent, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and practices. These experiments were often rooted in racist beliefs about Black people’s physiology.
  • Even today, Black Americans continue to experience significant disparities in health care due to lingering racial biases. Black Americans are still at risk of suffering from physicians’ internalized biases, such as being less likely to receive appropriate pain management and being treated differently incardiovascular care and cancer diagnosis and treatment. 
  • The historical mistreatment of Black Americans in medicine has led to a deep and understandable mistrust of the U.S. health care system. This mistrust has perpetuated health disparities, as Black people may be less likely to seek care. It is the responsibility of all health care institutions and practitioners to rebuild this trust so all populations can feel comfortable and able to access quality health care resources.
  • There are many Black doctors, public health educators, and medical scientists who have made huge contributions to the field throughout history. These health heroes include people like chemist Alice Ball, who developed a treatment for Hansen’s disease in 1915; “the father of the blood bank” Dr. Charles R. Drew, who led research into blood storage methods and invented mobile blood collection clinics in the 1930s; and Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a viral immunologist at the NIH whose was instrumental in the development of the COVID-19 vaccination.

The Interview

The guest: Matthew McCurdy

The key takeaways:

  • Both systemic and interpersonal racism have profound effects on physical health. In Atlanta, many Black communities have significantly shorter lifespans, and higher rates of maternal health issues, heart disease complications, and cancer rates than white communities. Making systemic changes to high-quality, accessible health care could help to narrow some of these disparities.
  • Health care providers and institutions must actively work to establish and build trust with Black communities. Individual physicians and providers should pay closer attention to patient health literacy, personalize care recommendations, and examine how their own biases might affect their interactions with patients.
  • Empowering Black communities to advocate for their health needs is crucial in addressing health disparities. Bringing health care directly to communities, rather than requiring people to travel long distances for care, can make a significant difference. For example, cancer screening programming through health centers in Atlanta effectively increases screening availability to entire communities.
  • Teaching new medical and public health students about social determinants of health, systemic racial inequities, and health disparities is essential for developing a workforce that can treat, understand, and advocate for diverse patients and communities. This type of education helps future providers recognize the broader factors affecting health and ensures they are better prepared to offer inclusive and culturally competent care.

The Listener Questions 

What would it mean for the U.S. to leave the World Health Organization?

President Trump recently signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). Withdrawing from the WHO requires a one-year notice and payment of any leftover annual dues. Trump gave notice of intent to withdraw in the summer of 2020 during his first presidency, but when Biden came into office in 2021, he withdrew that notice and kept the U.S. involved.

Some people are worried that because Trump’s executive Oorder revokes Biden's withdrawal of the notice, Trump will argue that he has given the required notice and will withdraw immediately.

This does not bode well for the U.S. and the WHO. The U.S. dues for 2025 are about $130 million, and U.S. gives the most funding to the WHO of any country because we also have philanthropic groups like the Gates Foundation that donate large sums.

It is unclear if donations from U.S. organizations would have to stop if the U.S. leaves, but even losing $130 million a year would not be great for the WHO. We also provide expert support to the WHO. About 30 CDC employees currently embedded in the WHO will all be recalled if this goes through.

Withdrawing would cause the U.S. to lose its role in global health discussions. We wouldn’t be present for conversations on how to respond to emerging threats, we would not have easy access to data sharing to respond to crises, we would lose access to global surveillance networks, we would not be part of response teams to global emergencies, and we would risk losing our standing as a global health leader.

What is going on with the HHS communications pause?

An order came from the Trump administration last week to pause all external communications from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—including the CDC, FDA, NIH, and others—through February 1.

This means that things like regulation announcements, guidance, social media posts, and website updates to things like publicly available surveillance data have all been postponed until they can be reviewed by apolitical appointee, though a representative has said there will be exceptions made for communications critical to health and safety.

This includes the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which was expected to include new studies on H5N1 bird flu. It is now unclear when this will be released.

In addition to the communication pause, there’s been a seemingly indefinite ban on alltravelwithin the HHS, meaning anyone who was planning to travel to a conference to present study results, to meetings with stakeholders, or to study sites cannot do that, and anyone currently at an out-of-state event must return home.

They have also cancelled all NIH advisory committee meetings and study sections to review grant applications, which are required by law to happen before research grants can be funded. These pauses and cancellations so far seem to be indefinite, which is causing a lot of stress among the scientific and research community.

The NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world with a grant budget of about$40 billion, and if they delay awarding those grants for too long it could be detrimental to scientific development. Likewise, delaying communications or requiring all communications to be reviewed by a political appointee, rather than allowing scientists to communicate the facts as they are, can hurt response times and collaboration unnecessarily.

Pauses on communications and travelhave happened with other administrations, but this is still something to watch.


Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:  

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