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Melissa Creary, assistant professor of Health Management and Policy, recently appeared on the television show American Black Journal to discuss sick cell disease. The US Food and Drug Administration recently approved several new gene therapies for the disease.
Adults with sickle cell disease around half as likely to have gotten initial doses as people without sickle cell disease, according to new research from University of Michigan researchers.
Federal approval of a breakthrough gene-editing technology that treats the pain and debilitating effects of sickle cell disease is cause for celebration among a community with few options for relief, but it also comes with concerns that too few people can afford to pay for the therapy.
In February 2021, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) tweeted, “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?” The tweet was designed to promote a podcast that was ostensibly focused on structural racism yet did not include experts on the topic. The subsequent uproar highlighted the harm caused by deep intentional ignorance of the term structural racism, defined in the American Journal of Public Health as “policies and practices…that confer advantages on people considered White and ideologies that maintain these advantages, while simultaneously oppressing other racialized groups.”
As public health faculty passionate about health equity, Melissa Creary and Paul Fleming have spent their careers observing the ways in which racism creates barriers to health for communities. Now, the pair are laying plans to make an impact on public health education through anti-racist teaching, beginning in their own backyard.
Assistant professor of Health Management and Policy Melissa Creary discusses discrimination among patients in the US health care system.