You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey there, Maria Gidoi here, guest hosting on Shortwave for a few weeks.

I'm a correspondent on the Science Desk, I Cover Health.

One of the stark realities of this pandemic is its uneven impact by race and ethnicity.

COVID-19 has exposed long-standing and massive health disparities,

resulting in people of color dying at disproportionately higher rates than other races in the US.

Stories about it are increasingly in the news across a wide variety of organizations and institutions

and in academia and scientific journals.

But science correspondent for stat news, Ushaleem McFarling says,

research into health disparities has been around for a long time.

You know, it dates back to W.E.B. Du Bois, you know, more than a century ago,

and generations of researchers have cared deeply about these disparities

that are really obvious and clear if you look.

Which, she says, is new is the collective national reckoning with those health disparities,

which comes amid a broader reckoning with race that followed the murder of George Floyd.

That's led to increased funding for studies and new interest from top journals.

And that's leading to a mentality where people are just clamoring to get into the field,

some of them with no background.

And the scientific publishing world is also having to confront its shortcomings.

J.M.A., the Journal of the American Medical Association,

dedicated an issue in August 2021 to racial and ethnic health disparities.

But Ushaleem noted something.

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