Tuskegee researchers made tests to respond to pandemic; Xavier opening new medical school; Hunters Point Biomonitoring tackles environmental justice as James, Sumchai, Verrett tackle fairness in health during Burbridge Center's How to Do Equity 2: Science of Fairness

BMWorldwide–Tuskegee, AL– While online trolls were using the spectre of the Tuskegee experiment to depress Black vaccination utilization, Tuskegee University was rallying Macon County and Alabama to the threat, even making its own tests for students and the community.

Crystal James, Esq. MPH, Co-Director of the Center for Rural Health and Economic Development, said the retirees and alumni of Tuskegee were invaluable as the College of Veterinary Medicine raised alarms about the spread of the illness from animals to humans.   Its labs would make tests, an extension o fhe proud history of research innovation at the historic campus where Dr. George Washington Carver taught.

Dr. Reynold Verrett, President of Xavier University, added that trust and representation is exactly why he has embarked on creating the first new HBCU medical school in 40 years.

Noting that the Flexner Report caused the closure of seven HBCU medical schools a century ago, he said we have to educate our own brains instead of importing them.

Had those schools continued, the ratio of Black doctors would be close to our representation in the workforce.

In San Francisco, Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai has created the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Program to track some of the worst pollution in the world, adjacent to an abandoned Navy shipyard

All three described what Fairness in Health should look like in their presentations during the second annual How to Do Equity symposium of the Dr. T. Nathaniel Burbridge Center for Inclusive Innovation.  The theme is the Science of Fairness.

Next week’s program on Fairness in History includes a session on How California Freed Lincoln and Order of Battle: U.S. Troops of African Descent in Texas, 1863-1914 as Oxford University Press historian John William Templeton debunks myths about Memorial Day and Juneteenth and gives the context for the centennial of the Lincoln Memorial.