"I was very glad to see the participation from our One Book One Community members during the nomination and selection process of this year’s One Book! I look forwarding to reading Dr. Dana-Ain Davis’ Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth , which provides insights into how racism contributes negatively to material and child health, and highlighting the work at Pitt Public Health on this very important topic."
- Jessica Burke, PhD, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
“I’m thrilled to participate in Pitt Public Health’s One Book One Community pick this year investigating a critical topic in this moment in the US. As public health students, researchers, and practitioners, we must reckon with the legacy of racism in healthcare that still exists today. I’m hopeful that by reading Dr. Davis’s book on reproductive justice, learning together about the effects of medical racism, and discovering new strategies for anti-racist healthcare practices, Pitt Public Health can take an important step toward making public health more equitable for all.”
- Stephanie Creasy, PhD, Project Coordinator, Pitt Public Health
"The United States is among the 10 countries with the greatest number of premature births, the brunt of which is experienced by Black women with a rate of 50% higher than white women. Dr. Dána-Ain Davis explores the ways in which medical racism sustains these disparities experienced by Black women and their newborns. Using ethnography from a Black Feminist approach, Dr. Davis draws from fieldwork with mothers, fathers, midwives, nurses, and other hospital staff to contextualize the conditions that lead to premature births as she links current racist views in medical practice today to the legacy of slavery. Her work centers structural racism and the pernicious ways in which it manifests in prenatal care and everyday life as the main culprit of the persistent disparities in premature births and makes racism a public health issue."
- Elí Andrade, Doctoral Student, Behavioral and Community Health Sciences