Mechanistic Targets for Intervening with Racial Disparities

Presented by: Dr. Lisa A. Cooper, Dr. Dean Schillinger, and Dr. Gilbert C. GeeDate: February 24th, 2:00 to 4:30 PM EST

Discover innovative ways to address the root causes of health disparities and gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of race-related stressors, health literacy, and physician/patient interactions.

This 2.5-hour webinar will consist of three 40-minute talks followed by a 20-minute discussion panel, providing a comprehensive overview of the field's current state and addressing racial health disparities.

Lisa A. Cooper, MD, MPH
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor & James F. Fries Professor of Medicine, John Hopkins University

Topic: Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care by Improving Patient-Physician Relationships

In her talk, Dr. Cooper will provide some context to health disparities and their complex interactions throughout all domains in society—race, gender, income, residence, etc.—and highlight the health system factors and social relationships that stratify these disparities in healthcare. From this, she will explain the dimensions of the patient-clinician relationship, and the disparities that exist within them. In doing so, Dr. Cooper will touch upon evidence-based communication methods that can reduce the bias and disparities in healthcare, through the lens of research she has conducted over the course of her career. These include the “Patient-Physician Partnership to Improve Blood Pressure Adherence”(also known as Triple P Study), “Project ReD CHiP”, and “RICH LIFE”. With the lessons learned from these studies, she plans to discuss multilevel approaches to improve physician-patient relationships and reduce disparities in the delivery of health care.

Gilbert C. Gee, PhD
Professor & Chair of Community Health Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles

Topic: Understanding the Role of Structural Racism and Racialized Rules in Perpetuating Racial Health Inequities

Dr. Gee will discuss why racial health inequities persist despite large-scale interventions, such as the Civil Rights Acts. He posits that a key reason for the lack of sustained equity is that interventions have mainly focused on individual and institutional forms of racism but have not examined structural racism. His presentation distinguishes among these various forms of racism and discusses the “bucky ball” analogy. Further, Dr. Gee examines racialized rules as one of the mechanisms that perpetuate the racial hierarchy across institutions, and how we might begin to move forward.

Dean Schillinger, MD
Professor of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco

Topic: Precision Communication: Implications for Clinical Care, Public Health, and Health Equity

Dr. Schillinger will speak about his work related to advancing health literacy as a means to promote health equity and reduce racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health. He will briefly review what is known about the independent associations between health literacy and health outcomes and will provide a novel conceptual framework that elucidates the complex role that health literacy plays in modifying the relationship between structural determinants and health outcomes. The model brings together both individual- and public health literacy from a socio-ecologic perspective. He will then share theoretically distinct examples of his communication research to advance individual health literacy and public health literacy, respectively.