Implicit Bias in Healthcare

Over the course of Under the Skin, the author investigates the ways in which implicit bias negatively impacts health care for Black Americans. Villarosa identifies this issue at the forefront of Chapter 1, “Everything I Thought Was Wrong.” Although “The poor health outcomes of the world’s wealthiest nation are often presented as a mystery,” Villarosa argues that “their root causes are hiding in plain sight: these disparities are driven by inequality and discrimination, which lead to poor health in people of color in the United States, particularly African Americans” (1). Over the course of the chapters that follow, Villarosa sets out to investigate why this is the case. She particularly avers that such racial disparities in America’s healthcare system were “born more than four hundred years ago” and thus can be traced back to America’s history of enslavement and segregation (3). Because such institutions have...