Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Healthcare is a pioneering work written by Dayna Bowen Matthew, a legal scholar specializing in public health who draws on her extensive background in civil rights law and health policy to demonstrate the pervasiveness of racial disparities in the US healthcare system. Originally published in 2015, this book provides an in-depth analysis of how implicit bias, institutionalized discrimination, and structural inequalities shape health outcomes for marginalized racial and ethnic groups in the US.

Dayna Bowen Matthew is a professor and Dean of Law at the George Washington University Law School. She is also Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the same university. Her academic expertise and public advocacy work are central to Just Medicine, as she draws on abundant evidence from medical studies, social studies, law expertise, interviews with people in a wide range of professions related to healthcare, and personal experience to make an argument for a systemic change in healthcare. Matthew’s writing is scholarly, yet accessible to a wide public and policymakers alike.

Just Medicine is a non-fiction book, with a specific focus on health law, public health policy, and social justice. The work engages with current and historical topics of healthcare reform, civil rights, and the role of law in dismantling systemic inequalities.