thinking about implicit bias and diversity in ‘history of health’

Whenever I found myself face to face with an official form with the questions: “Race: ___ Ethnicity: ___”, I would always freeze and ask my mum what to do. This week in my History of Health course, I found out the definitions of race and ethnicity, and don’t plan on freezing up anytime soon!

I learned that diversity contains multiple subtleties that comprise its whole, from the variety of orientations, expressions and identities that one is capable of assuming nowadays. I find that this wide array of options becomes both daunting and comforting. With the evolved comfort of making your own choices as opposed to being oppressed into a category against the overwhelming feeling of making a choice and taking it upon yourself to choose a ‘category’ or community to be within. In learning of the attempts to increase minority representation (even dating back to 1985), I found that there are many initiatives to understand the run off effect of poorer health in racial and ethnic minorities due to bias against them, leading to even greater health disparities.

Additionally, I learned that there is a severe lack of racial equity in the health sector, with one of the most shocking facts for me being that there is a seven year difference in life expectancy between racial and ethnic populations. Especially in this week’s information, I find it more and more important to educate the general public on as much information as possible when it comes to bias and instilling this bias to the extent that it impacts other human beings due to the color of their skin or their heritage. As stated in Islam’s article: “A toxic combination of poor policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements and bad governance may lead to unfavorable conditions.” (1). I feel this statement overshadows all of the planning and talk of frameworks and planning that are increasing in governmental organisations. I agree with the meticulous planning and appropriate objectives set by the Healthy People 2030 initiative, as an example, but question the rate of success over time, that the objectives will be effective quick enough as there are individuals left to face bias in being medically treated right this moment.

A take-home message I found in this week’s material was that there simply a lot of consequences when it comes to preparing adequate policies and environments stable enough for the equal treatment of all races and ethnicities, and in a similar way a lot of consequences when these environments are unstable and lead to even more severe consequences on the health of minorities.

I was initially surprised with the format of the test itself - with the focus being almost all on reaction time and muscle memory. With this being said, I was surprised with my results - especially after spending a lot of time considering the questions and weighing as many factors as possible. However in taking the test itself, I believe that the method of testing chosen for certain tests (such as the switch of the meaning of keys in the middle of the test) is largely effective in confusing the test-taker, and making the person think harder, thus taking longer (which may also skew the results!). I think that education on bias, and especially implicit bias, is important for the general population to understand because it allows for there to be a small moment of reflection before acting or speaking, which I believe is key in an evolving world. Though it is important to increase education on discrimination and unnconscious bias, I think that taking this test would not change a large part of the decisions and reflections made. Rather, I think that in taking the test and when receiving certain results, it would be beneficial to raise awareness to the myriad of issues associated to racial bias or gender identity bias, as identified by the prescribed textbook readings and John Oliver videos.

One bit of information that surprised me the most this week was the difficulty in which race is gradually evolving from biological classification to social construct. I believe I had this preconceived notion of race and ethnicity playing an incredibly large role in determining certain diseases and health related issues, but in learning of the increased inaccuracies in self-reported data, I was surprised to hear about a movement away from standardized forms.

With that, I think a question I have from the content is focused on how standardized reporting will change and how bias will be ‘avoided’ or neutralised within these forms/questions. Additionally, I would be curious to know if there are any other forms of test your implicit bias, especially to compare results and test questions to the Harvard one.

(i appear to have referenced a great amount of the prescribed material for this history of health course (ofc im gonna follow the assignment), so in case one was wondering what they are, thats what i was up to.... also when referencing "Harvard" i'm referencing the implicit bias test from Harvard.)