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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...2021-11-13T19:50:19&utm_campaign=the-atlantic
Whether Patients Understand Is Beside the Point
Ending health disparities is too important a goal to cede to propagandists.
By Conor Friedersdorf
About the author: Conor Friedersdorf is a California-based staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.
Last week, during a White House press briefing on COVID-19, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky urged Americans to get jabs for their kids. “We know that vaccination helps to decrease community transmission,” she said, “and protect those who are most vulnerable.”
Her message was succinct, accurate, and easy to understand. But it was at odds with new guidance from the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges. In a document called Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts, the AMA and AAMC urge physicians and other health-care workers to replace many “commonly used” words, such as vulnerable, with “equity-focused” alternatives, such as oppressed.
The document is a classic example of how administrative bureaucracies of all sorts are thinking about social justice in 2021. Substantive disparities exist in health-care outcomes in the United States—across a variety of demographic and socioeconomic lines––alongside ongoing debates about their causes and how best to eliminate them. But in response, two leading medical organizations are proposing a lot of language policing that presumes far-left answers to a host of thorny questions.
In this instance, the guide explains:
If adhering to the guidance, Walensky would have to say something like, “We know that vaccination helps to decrease community transmission and protect those who are most oppressed.”
But that would be misleading. Medical vulnerability is not synonymous with oppression. Men are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than women, but not because men are more oppressed. My grandmother is far more vulnerable to the disease than a wrongfully incarcerated teenager, yet she is far less oppressed. Meanwhile, a warehouse worker whose boss fails to update workplace-safety protocols might indeed be vulnerable to COVID-19 because of lopsided power relations. But if exposed to a public-health message urging vaccination for “the most oppressed,” he might think, That’s not me, whereas a message informing him that “indoor workers are among the most vulnerable” is far more explicit about whom the advice is for....
Whether Patients Understand Is Beside the Point
Ending health disparities is too important a goal to cede to propagandists.
By Conor Friedersdorf
About the author: Conor Friedersdorf is a California-based staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.
Last week, during a White House press briefing on COVID-19, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky urged Americans to get jabs for their kids. “We know that vaccination helps to decrease community transmission,” she said, “and protect those who are most vulnerable.”
Her message was succinct, accurate, and easy to understand. But it was at odds with new guidance from the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges. In a document called Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts, the AMA and AAMC urge physicians and other health-care workers to replace many “commonly used” words, such as vulnerable, with “equity-focused” alternatives, such as oppressed.
The document is a classic example of how administrative bureaucracies of all sorts are thinking about social justice in 2021. Substantive disparities exist in health-care outcomes in the United States—across a variety of demographic and socioeconomic lines––alongside ongoing debates about their causes and how best to eliminate them. But in response, two leading medical organizations are proposing a lot of language policing that presumes far-left answers to a host of thorny questions.
In this instance, the guide explains:
Vulnerability is the result of socially created processes that determine what resources and power groups have to avoid, resist, cope with, or recover from threats to their well-being. Instead of stigmatizing individuals and communities for being vulnerable or labeling them as poor, we begin to name and question the power relations that create vulnerability and poverty.
People are not vulnerable; they are made vulnerable.
People are not vulnerable; they are made vulnerable.
If adhering to the guidance, Walensky would have to say something like, “We know that vaccination helps to decrease community transmission and protect those who are most oppressed.”
But that would be misleading. Medical vulnerability is not synonymous with oppression. Men are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than women, but not because men are more oppressed. My grandmother is far more vulnerable to the disease than a wrongfully incarcerated teenager, yet she is far less oppressed. Meanwhile, a warehouse worker whose boss fails to update workplace-safety protocols might indeed be vulnerable to COVID-19 because of lopsided power relations. But if exposed to a public-health message urging vaccination for “the most oppressed,” he might think, That’s not me, whereas a message informing him that “indoor workers are among the most vulnerable” is far more explicit about whom the advice is for....