By John Murawski
Part 1 of 2 Articles (Part 2Â Here)
Rejection used to be common for medical sociologist Thomas LaVeist when he tried to get his research published on the effects of racism on the health of black people. âNow,â said the 60-year-old dean of Tulane Universityâs School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, âI have those same journals asking me to write articles for them.â
LaVeistâs experience illustrates the dramatic transformation in medical research, accelerating in the past few years. While few would dispute that black Americans are more prone to chronic health problems and have shorter life expectancies than whites, the medical community generally sought answers in biology, genetics and lifestyle. Research, like LaVeistâs, that focused on racism was frowned upon as lacking rigor or relevance, an amateurish detour from serious intellectual inquiry.