Dear SDOH colleagues:

My own research on an allied health profession echoes these observations about a predominatly white Western presence in health professions. Measures to address this must go beyond the simplistic pipeline model (getting greater numbers of the marginalized group into the profession) that is often touted as the answer. Science and medicine (including public health) were constructed with specific targeted exclusionary strategies to ensure that they remained bastions of white Western men (for example, see Kraut, 1994, among others). Their bodies of knowledge are linear, hierarchical and fragmented; their traditional practices are competitive, unwelcoming and disenfranchising to those with more holistic world views. I'm glad to hear about the creation of communities of individuals in these fields who can contest knowledge construction because simply trying to bring in more individuals into the current alienating practices of health and science will only reproduce the patterns of marginalization we see now.

Kraut, Alan M. (1994). Silent travelers: Germs, genes and the 'immigrant menace'. New York: Basic Books.

Moira M. Grant

University of Ontario Institute of Technology