Health equity podcast episode 3 – Racism and its effects on health in Veterans

Race and chronic illness

In this episode, Dr. Juliette McClendon provides insights into racism’s effect on a Veteran’s health. McClendon is a psychologist in the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston.

McClendon studies the role of discrimination in shaping racial/ethnic mental health differences. She discusses how racism is a chronic stressor that causes physiological changes within the body. These chronic stressors ultimately contribute to chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. She also discusses how racism can affect mental health and worsen PTSD symptoms in Veterans.

Development of tools to support fairness

Dr. Leslie Hausmann is the Equity Capacity Building Core director within the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP). She spearheads the development and dissemination of tools and education to support innovative fairness in health research and quality improvement.

Hausmann discusses what Veterans have reported experiencing while seeking care at a VA facility. She also discusses how, on a systems level, VA needs to track quality of care by race and ethnicity to uncover health inequities.

McClendon and Hausmann then dive into what VA is currently doing to address these racial inequities. And they lay out a roadmap of where we need to go from here. This is an episode you will not want to miss.

Program information

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