Prescribed Inequalities: Confronting Anti-Blackness and Structural Racism in American Healthcare

From exam rooms to operating theaters to medical schools, racism is not an aberration in American healthcare, it is embedded in its foundations. In this urgent and illuminating panel, physician-activist Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, Public Law Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law Dr. Khiara M. Bridges, and award-winning investigative journalist and professor Nicole Carr confront the structures that continue to endanger Black lives. In Negligent by Design, Dr. Grubbs argues that anti-Blackness in medicine is not accidental but systemic, woven into diagnostic tools, training, and institutional culture. She challenges healthcare professionals to move beyond symbolic gestures and commit to structural change. In Expecting Inequity, Bridges exposes the persistence of racism in maternal healthcare, revealing that even affluent Black women face disproportionate risk in pregnancy and childbirth. Drawing on in-depth research, Bridges shows how class privilege cannot shield patients from racialized neglect. In The Price of Exclusion, Carr uncovers the hidden history of Black medical pioneers and the deliberate policies that excluded them from power. Through investigative reporting and personal history, she traces how that legacy fuels today’s health disparities. Together, these authors explore how medical racism is reproduced across generations and what it will take to dismantle it. Join us for a powerful conversation moderated by University of San Francisco sociologist and bioethics scholar Dr. Jennifer James, author of the much cited, “Reproductive Justice and Abolition: Important Lessons Black Feminists Have Been Teaching Us for Years”. This discussion calls for more than awareness, it demands transformation, centering accountability, justice, professional responsibility, and the urgent work of building a healthcare system that truly values every life.