Critical Race Theory and the Health Sciences

This symposium will explore the embedded nature of race in the health sciences and identify opportunities to disrupt and rethink these arrangements in pursuit of racial justice and health equity. We will examine the interconnected histories of science, medicine, and law that lead racial differences and disparities to be mistakenly understood and experienced as natural phenomena, obscuring their social, political, and economic determinants. We will also discuss the theoretical and empirical interventions that bring attention to the constructed nature of our racial imaginations in the health sciences. Additionally, the methodological challenges associated with developing intersectional approaches that do not obscure (and indeed support) the centrality of other identity standpoints—such as sex, gender, class, sexuality, and disability—when exploring race in health sciences research will be considered through the symposium presentations and discussions.