We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity: How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue by David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan (review).

Abstract

Reviewed by: We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity: How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue by David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan Rueben C. Warren, DDS, MPH, DrPH, MDiv (bio) We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity: How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue. David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity by David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan, MD is an extraordinary story of women and men who worked to improve the health and human condition of Black and other underserved or unserved populations. They established and sustained academic health professions institutions and provided health care, including health services and health education, to targeted populations. The Association of Minority Health Professions Schools has served all segments of society dating back to the 1800. The book chronicles instances where member schools engaged in human subjects research and educated a diverse population including racial/ethnic minority, sex/gender minoritized, low-income, rural, and urban students. They sustained a social agenda that extended across the globe. Minority health professions schools have historically targeted and educated African American students and students from other parts of the African Diaspora and the African continent. As a result, their impact extends beyond the U.S. Because of their common missions and the need to build a sustained collation, in 1976, the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) was founded for the modern era. The Association of Minority Health Professions Schools' work dates to the middle 1800s. Historically, minority health professions schools provided formal education and training in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, nursing, biomedical science, and various allied health programs. Due to limited resources, perceived need and demand, the schools modified or closed some of their education and training offerings. As they do to the present day, graduates participated in human subjects research; were among the pillars in educating health care professionals of minority health professions schools; engaged in direct patient care in the public and private sectors; assumed federal, state, and local government positions; and provided leadership in a plethora of public health areas. As global health communities strive for health equity, these Black health professions schools banded together to form the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) to "fight" for health equity before the term health equity was popularized by health professionals, educators, and public health officials. The hallmark of AMHPS's major achievements begins with its founding in 1976, continues with the 2010 elevation of the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities to an Institute within the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. Department of Health [End Page 513] and Human Services. The AMHPS member schools continue to press the United States towards a framework of equity in both health and health care. Chanoff and Sullivan's book chronicles the AMHPS story in 11 chapters, starting with an unnamed, enslaved Black man owned by a White doctor. The Black man assisted the doctor in his medical practice in Windsor, Connecticut. After "working" with the White physician for many years, the enslaved man was granted his freedom, adopted the name Prius Manumit, and established his own medical practice. According Chanofff and Sullivan, Manumit was the first African American physician accepted by White society. Better-known African American physicians include James Derham (Durham), who was born in 1762, in Philadelphia, and practiced medicine there, and Martin Robinson Delany and James McCune Smith who were in medical school, but who were forced to withdraw due to racist objections from their Harvard classmates. Harriet Kezia Hunt, an African American woman, also was forced to withdraw from Harvard because of racism and patriarchy. Interestingly, in 1869, Robert Tanner Freeman, an African American man, graduated in the first class of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. After their forced withdrawal from Harvard, Delany and Smith completed medical school abroad, returning to the U.S. to practice medicine. Both became involved in civil rights...