Racism Is a Disease

By Payton Kim

Racism Is a Disease

When addressing health disparities, it is easy to dismiss racial inequalities as a problem of only society, not of pathology. Yet I would challenge those in public health to not only condemn racism socially, but to also make an effort to analyze racism as it pertains to public health issues and to treat it with the gravity of any similarly deadly epidemic.

About the Author

Payton Kim

Payton Kim is an undergraduate researcher studying chromosome mechanics in the Kleckner Lab. She currently is working to develop a sensor for in-vivo forces contributing to DNA supercoiling. 

About this HPHRxHealthRighters Blog

This blog originally appeared on HPHRxHealth Righters.org, an online collaboration of the Harvard Public Health Review, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Health Righters.


Health Righters
is a multidisciplinary publication exploring the intersection of healthcare and human rights, led in part by Harvard College.