Racism as a Public Health Crisis

Betty Lin-Fisher of the Akron Beacon Journal  recently interviewed several Black Northeast Ohio citizens about how racism has affected their health care.

One of the people she talked with was Carl Allamby, M.D. (’19), who is a second-year emergency medicine resident at Cleveland Clinic Akron General. He’s one of only about 5% of physicians who are Black, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

“I know when I walk into a room, the first thing people know about me is that I’m Black. With that may come a bunch of different assumptions about my intelligence or my education or my experiences in life. That’s just the fact of how it is,” Dr. Allamby told Lin-Fisher.

Instead of a homogeneous cohort of health care workers, “We need more inclusion from so many people from different walks of life in medicine – African American, Hispanic, women,” he said.

Read the Akron Beacon Journal article.