Time’s Up Sets Its Sights On The Health Care Industry: ‘One Of The First Steps Is Acknowledging The Problem’
Time's Up, a movement against sexual harassment, announced it is launching a health care branch with the goals of uniting health care workers against harassment and inequity, improving care for those who have been marginalized, supporting awareness within health care organizations, promoting higher workplace standards regarding inclusivity and diversity, and reaching equitable compensation levels. On the same day, NIH officials publicly apologized for past failures in addressing a culture of sexual harassment.
Modern Healthcare:
Time's Up Launches Healthcare Branch To Address Harassment
A healthcare offshoot of Time's Up will officially launch on March 1 to try to bring safety and equity to the workplace. Time's Up was spawned out of the #MeToo movement, which gained global attention in 2017 as scores of women shared their stories of sexual harassment on social media. Time's Up has since spread to multiple industries as it looks to spur change. (Kacik, 2/28)
Stat:
Time’s Up Targets Gender Bias And Harassment In Health Care
STAT spoke with Dr. Jane van Dis, an OB-GYN in California, the chief executive of the nonprofit Equity Quotient, and founding member of Time’s Up Healthcare, about the group’s goals. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. (Thielking, 2/28)
Stat:
NIH Apologizes For Failure To Address Sexual Harassment In Science
The National Institutes of Health on Thursday apologized for its past failures to recognize and address the culture of sexual harassment that has impacted scientists for generations. “To all those who have endured these experiences, we are sorry that it has taken so long to acknowledge and address the climate and culture that has caused such harm,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement. ((Facher and Thielking, 2/28)
And in other news on medical personnel and bias —
USA Today:
African-American Enrollment In Medical School Lags Other Groups
Gabriel Felix is on track to graduate from Howard University's medical school in May. The 27-year-old from Rockland County, N.Y., has beaten the odds to make it this far, and knows he faces challenges going forward. He and other black medical school students have grown used to dealing with doctors' doubts about their abilities, and other slights: being confused with hospital support staff, or being advised to pick a nickname because their actual names would be too difficult to pronounce. (O'Donnell and Robinson, 2/28)
Chicago Tribune:
Chicago Has One Female, African-American Organ Transplant Surgeon. She Fights Disease — And Distrust Of Doctors
In some families, a deeply ingrained sense of betrayal, passed down through generations, can permeate doctor visits. It’s a product of medical experiments widely performed on slaves in the mid-1800s, a product of the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiment, begun in 1932, that denied hundreds of black men a proper diagnosis or treatment for a debilitating disease, a product of quality medical care existing just out of geographic reach. (Stevens, 3/1)
