Dr. Otis Brawley In Conversation With Douglas Brooks: ‘We Don’t Need to Reform Health Care—We Need to Transform Health Care’

Douglas Brooks served as the head of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy during the Obama Administration as the first openly gay, HIV-positive African American to hold the job. He focused on addressing the health needs of those at higher risk of HIV infection, and is now executive director of community engagement at the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. Dr. Otis Brawley was chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society before becoming a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins, where he oversees a research effort exploring disparities in cancer rates and outcomes. Over a Zoom call, the two discussed the systemic factors behind racial inequities in health and how COVID-19 may serve as a catalyst for addressing them. Dr. Otis Brawley: It’s a combination of racism as well as socio-economic deprivation that causes people to not do as well. It starts out at birth and involves what we eat, what our habits are, what our living conditions are, and involves prevention of disease, which I think is not stressed enough, as well as access to care to get treated once diagnosed. We have a lot of data to show that people who are poor are going to have more high-calorie diets, and it causes increased amounts of obesity. People who are poor are not going to be able to have access to doctors for counseling about prevention of disease. If you look at the major chronic diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, they’re all caused by...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized feature Magazine Source Type: news