Tackling anti-Black racism in Canadian health care: Experts putting together first primer of its kind

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A group of prominent Canadian Black health researchers is trying to change the lack of education about Black health for medical students, aiming to create the first health primer of its kind to educate health care providers and ultimately improve care for Black Canadians.

TORONTO -- In Canada, many medical students aren’t taught specifically how best to treat Black patients and how to keep anti-Black racism out of health care — with patients suffering the consequences.

Nnorom, an assistant professor and associate program director of the Public Health and Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at University of Toronto, is one of the founders of the Black Health Education Collaborative . She said it became clear that in Canada, when it comes to health curricula for care providers such as nurses and medical students, either data on the Black population wasn’t included in lessons, or curricula used American data.

Nnorom said that while the issue of anti-Black racism in Canada has been starkly clear for a long time — the United Nations even put out a report in 2017 calling on Canada to address anti-Black racism stemming from the country’s history of slavery — 2020 made those who weren’t paying attention before finally open up their eyes.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic, the advocacy that was done to collect race-based data, when it came to COVID-19 infections, by the time we got to August of 2020, we realized in Toronto that 89 per cent of the COVID-19 cases in Toronto were Black and racialized people,” Nnorom pointed out. “A lot of the stereotypes about us stem from the legacy of slavery here in Canada and across North America. So these myths about our pain threshold, for instance, like that we have a different pain threshold or thicker skin means that you see a lot of Black patients being undertreated for pain,” Nnorom said.

The third way that anti-Black racism permeates the health-care system is through explicit bias, Nnorom explained. She hopes that by providing more education to health care providers and practitioners, they will be more aware of their biases and more aware of the lived experiences of the different patients they may encounter.

“There are a number of people who have lived experience who can speak to alternative approaches to being able to actually treat all patients with dignity,” she said. This is a philosophy that has been helpful in her work trying to do community outreach about the COVID-19 vaccines. She explained that there is a greater distrust of the vaccine in Black communities, stemming from how the community has been historically mistreated in the health-care system.

 

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Largest opponents of vaccines in USA are black folks and latinos so now truth and fact are no doubt going to be racist ?

This headline and picture is racist. Are we in West Germany, I thought I was Canada? DropTheCharade

Is this a CTV parody account? It’s too stupid to be a real story.

Jesus ,PM of color. CTV your kidding Canadian people right. 🙄. Why not FN instead. What next. Bad enough we have kangaroo court. What's next you come up with .

Ironically, the largest % of Unvaxxed people are people of colour. The same people you're banning from planes, trains, entertainment, restaurants...etc.

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