Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

The contributors to this edited volume have created a veritable bible on Black women's reproductive health. Beginning with a historical framework, each chapter discusses the origins and implications of the impacts of race, geographic region, historical context, and public health implications of the effects of intersectionality on Black women's sexual health. While this compendium of essays claims not to be an exhaustive review, it does come close, based on all the extant information regarding this topic. Divided into four sections, this collection of 31 chapters begins with reimagining how scholars and practitioners research Black women's sexuality and reproductive health before addressing the myths and falsehoods that society holds, and that the mainstream media promotes, about this topic. From there the sections turn to activism and then finally to centering holistic ways of knowing and caring for Black women's bodies, souls, and overall sexual and reproductive well-being. Taken together, this voluminous collection is the most comprehensive and well-executed research on Black women's public health to date.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Unequal Health analyzes a pressing social dilemma in the US: persistent, intractable racial health disparities. Penner (Wayne State Univ.), Dovidio (Yale Univ.), Hagiwara (Univ. of Virginia), and Smedley (Urban Institute) provide an in-depth chronicle of the social determinants of health and healthcare linked to profound racial disparities. Decades of law and policies have built systems that function with race as a biological truth, which it is not. The authors distinguish among individual, mediated, and systemic racism. Their succinct syntheses are evidenced-based and discuss the nonconscious aspect of anti-Black racism. The introduction ("An American Dilemma") notes that the core of anti-Black racism is a variant myth that presupposes biological attributes of race. COVID-19 revealed the depth of racial health disparities in the US. Chapter 1 ("The Past Is Prologue") highlights existing racial tensions, e.g., the Arkansas senator who introduced a bill prohibiting schools from receiving federal funds for teaching The 1619 Project (CH, May'22, 59-2690). Chapters 3 ("'Two Americas'") and 4 ("Racism in American Medicine") reveal how every part of American medicine is affected. The book discusses systemic racism through both public and private entities--e.g., the impact of the Flexner Report (1910) on physician training and racial exclusion in medical care before Medicare and Medicaid.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.