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20 July 2021

Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States

Professor Anne Pollock’s new book, “Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States”, will be launched at a virtual event in Atlanta on August 15.

US flag rippling

Sickening examines the institutionalised inequality in health in the USA, exploring events such as healthcare in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the clean water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to analyse the diversity of anti-black racism inherent in American healthcare, and concludes with a stark scrutiny of the racialised inequality of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

Professor Anne Pollock will be joined for the launch in conversation by American physician, epidemiologist, and anti-racist physician, epidemiologist, and activist Camara Jones, who is known for her work in “defining institutional racism, personally mediated racism, and internalized racism in the context of modern U.S. race relations”. The event will be hosted at Atlanta’s feminist bookstore, Charis Books & More, and will take place virtually, welcoming quests from around the world.

Health disparities have become an urgent topic in public conversation, and this book can help to make those conversations more grounded. Each of the cases that I write about in the book is “sickening” in that it provokes disgust and outrage, and each of them also reveals the many ways in which living in a racist society makes people sick.

Professor Anne Pollock

Professor Anne Pollock is a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Her research focuses on biomedicine and culture, theories of race and gender, and ways in which science and medicine are mobilised in social justice projects.

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Sickening

In this story

Professor Anne Pollock

Head, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine