A Medical Mythbuster’s Mission to Improve Health Care | Joel Bervell | TED

24,548 views ・ 2024-10-14

TED


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I think in the face of any adversity,
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communities of color have always found solutions.
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I think for me, social media is one of those places and safe havens.
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Social media can be a positive change.
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It can inform masses about really crucial issues
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that are often overlooked in the media.
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My followers often are commenting on my videos saying,
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"I haven't seen this anywhere else."
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I think that social media can save lives when used in the right way.
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My name is Joel Bervell,
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I'm a fourth-year medical student,
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but I'm better known online as a medical mythbuster
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for creating content about health equity, the hidden history of medicine
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and the ways that healthcare needs to change for communities of color.
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When I first started medical school, it was a really interesting time.
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I was thinking a lot about Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
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All these moments were happening at the same time
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that I entered my first year of medical school,
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where myself and one other medical student were the only two Black medical students
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in our school of 200 students.
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It made me think a lot
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about how we were talking about race in the United States
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and what race meant in the context of being a medical student.
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I kept hearing in my classes
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that Black people were more likely to have asthma,
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more likely to get COVID,
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Black people were more likely to have diabetes.
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We never dived into the social or other political ramifications of why that was
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and the history behind what led to those health disparities to exist.
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Seeing the lack of diverse medical education in my curriculum
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made me want to actually take to TikTok and Instagram
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to talk about the things that I wasn't seeing in school.
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(Video) My name is Joel, the medical mythbuster.
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And let's talk about racial bias with the alpha-fetoprotein test.
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Let's talk about racial biases in lung function tests.
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Let’s talk about the racialization of X-ray radiation.
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The misguided racial correction built into this device, spirometer,
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it assumes that all Black and Asian patients
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have a lower lung functioning compared to any other race.
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Up to 93 percent of cervical cancers are preventable.
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Yet in the United States, Latinos are more likely to be diagnosed with it,
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and Black women are more likely to die from it.
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Looking back at this history teaches us is how racism becomes embedded
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and unnoticed until we raise the alarm to practices that make no sense.
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["When you go to medical school to learn how to heal people]
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[but also learn that racial biases still exist in medicine.]
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[So you start using social media to expose the racial biases and educate everyone]
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So many of my videos,
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a lot of the comments were from healthcare professionals: doctors, nurses, PAs,
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saying, "I've never heard about this."
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A study in 2016 was done and actually showed
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that 50 percent of medical students or residents
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endorse at least one false biological belief about differences
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between Black and non-Black patients.
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So goes to show how the history of these biases
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and stereotypes continue till today
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and can impact the way that patients get care.
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Because everyone, especially most Black people,
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have had an experience in the hospital
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where they felt like they weren't listened to,
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they were ignored, and they want to understand why.
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There's already legacies and histories
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of why communities of color don't trust the medical system.
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You can look at so many things that have been done.
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(Video) In 1961, Fannie Lou Hamer went to the hospital
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for the removal of a small uterine tumor.
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While under anesthesia, she was given a hysterectomy without consent.
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This woman's cells were used for research on COVID, polio,
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cancer and so much more, but they were taken without her consent.
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Dr. Sims practiced genital surgeries on enslaved Black women and children
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without any anesthesia.
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Our job as physicians needs to be to be able to figure out
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what should and what shouldn’t stand
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from past beliefs to present beliefs.
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I think diversity, equity, inclusion is one way that we're able
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to critically evaluate the systems around us,
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especially in medicine.
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Diversity, equity, inclusion one, is really important
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because it goes beyond race.
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It goes to thinking about all aspects of our social identities
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and how that interacts with the healthcare field.
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And two, it's necessary
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just because the patient population we serve is diverse in itself.
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So often there are places in medicine where it doesn't make sense to use race.
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Whether that's through an equation that's about kidney functioning
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or about lung functioning.
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So being able to talk about DEI in that lens
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allows us to critically evaluate why we use race-specific issues.
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If we're not able to accurately critique why race is included in systems,
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and whether that's harming or helping patients,
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we're unable to do our job of do no harm.
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But there's a concerted effort to try
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and essentially root diversity, equity, inclusion out of medicine,
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people thinking that's negative in the medical field.
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If these anti-DEI bills continue to get passed,
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I think we're going to see less diversity in medicine across the spectrum.
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I think we're going to see less access to research
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that's really critically thinking about why we're using race
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and being able to kind of recorrect that,
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which has already been difficult to get people to talk about in the first place.
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We're going to see scholarship programs dry up.
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We're going to see programs that are investing in the next generation go away.
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We're going to see students less interested in going into medicine,
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simply because there's not investments into communities
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that have been overlooked for so long.
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We're going to be set back to a time
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where we were not moving medicine forward
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and actively harming patients.
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I don't want to scare people away from the health care system,
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but I want them to know that they have the power
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and there's information they can have when they get to the doctor
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so they feel a little bit more confident.
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When there's awareness, providers, patients, researchers
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can actually start tackling a problem.
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I think when we don't know it's a problem, we don't do anything about it.
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I think there's just so many opportunities to use social media
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as this ground for community to build and create advocacy
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and hopefully create change.
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I think especially when it comes to anti-DEI bills,
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I think that's the space we're going into.
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It can be a space to continue to learn,
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educate and hopefully talk about how we can improve medicine overall.
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