Q&A: AMA’s chief health equity officer on ridding medicine of racial essentialism
Aletha Maybank, a member of the 2024 #STATUSList, is pushing to transform the culture of health care with her work at the American Medical Association's chief health equity officer.
In the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. in 2020, many institutions confronted their own histories of racism, lack of diversity, and failures to consider the impact of structural inequities on public health. That process was already underway at the American Medical Association, spearheaded in large part by Aletha Maybank, who was hired in 2019 to launch the organization’s Center for Health Equity.
Maybank, a physician who previously served as the founding deputy commissioner for the New York City health department’s Center for Health Equity, has kept pushing to transform the culture of health care via her work at the AMA — whether by promoting health equity education for health care providers or fostering partnerships with large health systems through the Rise to Health Coalition to address issues like disparities in maternal mortality rates. Maybank also moderates the AMA web series “Prioritizing Equity,” which started with a focus on the stories of physicians who prioritized equity in their Covid response efforts.
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