Although I’ve read a few race-based social justice books which include health inequality narratives and statistics, and a couple of books on women’s health which include racial inequality information, this is the first book I’ve encountered which is entirely about the racism endemic in societies around the world and the effects that has at grass-roots level.

Layal Liverpool – “Systemic: How Racism is Making Us Ill”

(2 Febrary 2024, NetGalley)

If there is a single message that I want this book to convey, it is one of hope: that the health gaps which we have been examining throughout these pages aren’t inevitable. Recognising that it is racism, rather than race, which is the most singnificant contributor to racial and ethnic health inequities globablly means we are acknowledging that change is possible.

Taking a truly global perspective, looking at personal narratives and data (where the latter exist, one theme of the book, demonstrating that many countries don’t keep adequate statistics) to show how systemic racism, from policy-makers to healthcare providers in the field, affects a whole range of health areas for global majority people, from pregnancy and birth to cancer diagnosis and treatment, Covid inequities, genome sequencing and research in general.

The author is a science journalist and obviously has a clear understanding of the field and how to interpret research. She is honest that she’s not able to cover all the intersectionalities, concerning herself mainly with race, although gender obviously comes in when talking about pregnancy and birth, and also when discussing the different presentations of heart attacks in male and female patients as it crosses over with Black and Brown people being less likely to be believed by White health professionals. Layal also includes lots of data and studies on Indigenous people, who are often left out of racial justice narratives.

There’s a lot of shocking information, of course, particularly, I felt, the ancient hangovers from older now disproved research making claims about bodily differences on racial lines and outdated adjustments to measures of disease which mark out unwell people as healthy. Layal does a super job of bring all this to the audience in approachable language, with lots of real-life examples from people’s own experiences. I hope this will be read widely.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for selecting me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Systemic” was published on 6 June 2024.