Meet the Dermatologists Changing Their Field

Short Wave

NPR

Nature, News, Astronomy, Science, Daily News, Life Sciences

4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Many skin conditions, from rashes to Lyme disease to various cancers, present differently on dark skin. Yet medical literature and textbooks don't often include those images, pointing to a bigger problem in dermatology. Today on the show, we take a close look at how the science of skincare has evolved to better serve patients of color, but still has a long way to go.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, Emily Quang here, shortwave host.
0:03.0	So back in April, we were looking at some of the symptoms of COVID,
0:09.2	specifically COVID toes and other skin manifestations.
0:13.4	And I realized something pretty odd.
0:16.2	In the early clinical papers that helped doctors and dermatologist
0:19.5	diagnose COVID toes, lighter skin was overwhelmingly depicted
0:23.0	whereas darker skin tones were underrepresented.
0:26.2	And I found this really strange and pretty disturbing.
0:30.3	COVID was disproportionately impacting black and brown communities.
0:33.7	How could such a key symptom not be represented in the literature?
0:37.8	So this led to phone calls and background research
0:40.9	and pretty soon opened up a whole window
0:43.6	into skin of color dermatology.
0:45.7	These conversations really shaped how I think about medicine
0:50.0	and how I think about my reporting on shortwave.
0:53.2	So I hope you enjoy it.
0:54.4	Also, I taped this episode with Maddie Safaya, our former host.
0:58.3	And I want to share that we will have some exciting news
1:02.2	in the new year about shortwave hosting.
1:04.1	So stay tuned for that.
1:05.8	In the meantime, thanks for listening.
1:07.7	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
	...

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