On November 10, the NM Department of Health provided guidance regarding the pediatric Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5-11.
Author: mason
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November 18 Webinar
The NM Black Leadership Council is hosting a webinar on 11/18 regarding the impact of nutrition on mental health in the Black community. Register here.
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Adding to the Cork Board
If you have information you would like to share with this provider community, send it to DRoss@NMBLC.org. The Gourd will be published on the first and fifteenth of every month, so if you are announcing an upcoming event, please keep that timing in mind.
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Race Adjustment in Pulmonary Function Tests
In our first issue, we discussed the current reevaluation of race adjustments to glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Such racial adjustments are not unique to nephrology and today we are including references discussing pulmonary function tests. The original article appears in Chest but there is a nice summary in Medscape. The authors of the Chest article describe the origins of the current adjustment and point out the observed differences between white and black patients was not fully researched and was, instead, attributed to innate racial differences. The authors suggest an alternative but also warn that an abrupt change could also have detrimental effects on patients. Links to the Medscape summary and the Chest article are included below.
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Worse Survival in AML for Black Patients
A study published presented to the American Society of Hematology and published in Cancer Discovery described an increasing survival gap between white and black patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The authors controlled for multiple variables and still found a survival difference, suggesting genetic differences a play. Genetic analysis did, in fact, uncover differences in genetic markers. Socioeconomic factors also continued to contribute to the observed gap. The authors conclude that both factors need urgent attention.
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Do you believe constructs of Race / Patriarchy / Classism etc are deliberate for upholding the
economic structure of Capitalism?Excessive capitalism and economies based on ‘free-labor” or “normality’ of chattel slavery are at the center of governance for perpetuating the constructs of race, racism, racialization, patriarchy, and classism under the white-racist frame in American society. The political and economic foundation as systematized by the white-racial frame created a complex arrangement of institutionalized intergroup relations (alienation) that fostered the racialized identity of whiteness. Concrete material advantages created patterns of impoverishment and undeserved enrichment and white wealth and sociopolitical power. This encouraged the growth for social reproduction of oppression. Both the public and psychological wages of whiteness legitimized the societal specter of superiority and inferiority as justifiable. Hence, slavery in the Americas due to its expansion of commercial capitalism in a world market system remains distinguishable from Greco-Roman slavery in the ancient world. Wealth and prosperity from slavery built Britain and continental Europe as well as the U.S. Economic development and powerful slaveholders influenced the political structure from colonial America and the revolution, group terrorism, police states and exercise of police power, segregation and violence, economics, education, subjugation under at white republic both indirectly and directly. ‘Virtuous republicans’ led the embrace of consumerism of material goods as well as, beliefs, images, and narratives the supported their dominant racial frame.
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How would the world look without white supremacy?
Envisioning a world without white supremacy suggests a new golden age in planetary health based on dignity and respect for human rights. As we move through chaos towards truth, harmony, balance, and justice we promote human capability for transforming human culture away from systems of oppression and injustices. Yet, we as a biological species of have not yet developed the cultural transformational optimism for undoing structural violence caused by white supremacy ideology. Thus, we must use critical thinking, learning, and doing, as well as system analysis with critical leadership at multiple levels of problem solving to operationalize global human dignity and health security.
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I work in an arena in which the majority of staff are working on being anti-racist. Our leader goes along with the conversation, but behind closed doors and in practice, does not follow through on agreements, is micro aggressive. What are some constructive solutions to solving the power differential that exists and is therefore holding us back from being better in practice?
In bringing theory to practice remember that the dominant white-racist framing in America is intergenerationally reproduced by white elites with power and privilege in all social classes. Analyze and interpret how intellectual forces in business, communications, public policy, education, medicine, education, churches, and government created and codified and subtly maintains this societal framework. Remembering that white-racist framing and processes often go unrecognized (cognitive dissonance), therefore anti-racism generates a moral and ideological crisis for many white Americans. Several general disruptive innovations are: (a) Conduct a session on power analysis and the history of racism; (b) Training in mindfulness and critical thinking; (c) Use of the community readiness model; (d) use a process that helps move individuals through (1) sympathy, (2) empathy, and (3) autopathy; (e) discourse on the social context of racist practices under the social contract; and (f) extended use of anti-racist role models who have learned to overturn the oppressive and systematic racism created by their ancestors to a liberty and justice framework of society.
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It was impactful to hear how white people’s ignorance of white supremacy is an intentional product of the system. I would appreciate to hear more thoughts on this
Historically, the development of systemic racism and the unwillingness of white supremacy to die, has its deep context in macro-level process of U.S. institutions. These institutions consistently promote a pathologic form of anti-blackness and oppression through subordination and subjugation. White innocence, virtue, moral, physical, and intellectual superiority with defensiveness about racism in America’s past and present are fundamental components of our legalized system of white racial framing. Equally important, one finds a strong verbal-cognitive mindset linked to the language of hate, fear, guilt,repulsion, and greed in the conscious and unconscious minds of whites. Lastly, some studies speak to white ‘social alexithymia’ or the inability of many whites to understand intellectual empathy for the racialized experiences of non-whites in America.