Ethics Grand Rounds Oct. 21, 2022 | 12:15 - 1:30 PM CST Zoom | Free | Open to the Public

The Case for Health Care Reparations

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Headshot of Dr. Camisha Russell, PhD
Camisha Russell, PhD

Recording

In this talk, Dr. Russell draws on Olefumi Taiwo’s constructive view of reparations to argue that US healthcare systems must be rebuilt in the name of racial justice. Dr. Russell discusses the accumulations of advantage and disadvantage that characterize current US healthcare systems and their relationship to past harms and the US racial hierarchy. Dr. Russell also considers the relationship of healthcare-based reparations to contemporary calls for racial justice like the “Black Lives Matter” movement.  

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this talk, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe ways in which race and racism negatively impact healthcare in the present.
  2. Identify and reflect upon the connections between current health and healthcare disparities and the racial history of the US.
  3. Conceptualize justifications for and movements toward anti-racist structural reform of healthcare systems.

This was an event of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA) hosted by the Center for Bioethics and co-sponsored by the following U of MN units: the Medical School, the School of Nursing, the School of Public Health, the Program in Health Disparities Research, the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity, and the Center of Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies.

If you would like to learn more about the author's work on this topic, read their publication: "Meeting the Moment: Bioethics in the Time of Black Lives Matter".

Speaker(s)

Camisha Russell, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon and a Co-Editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. She specializes in Bioethics, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Feminist Philosophy. Her first book, The Assisted Reproduction of Race (Indiana University Press, 2018) considers the role of the race idea in practices surrounding assisted reproductive technologies and argues for the benefits of thinking of race itself as a technology. Other recent publications include “Meeting the Moment: Bioethics in the Time of Black Lives Matter” in the American Journal of Bioethics (2022), “Which Lives Matter in Reproductive Biomedicine?” in Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online (2021), and “Eugenics" in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race (2018). She is also the 2020-2021 recipient of the Baruch A Brody Award & Lecture in Bioethics.