Mark Shrime, MD, PhD

The academy, a battleground for justice: a call for prioritarian scholarship Knowledge, like any cultural product, is never produced in a vacuum.

Paulo Freire wrote, ‘it is in the interest of the oppressor to weaken the oppressed’.

And it is our imperative to counteract that weakening.

To counteract recrudescent hegemony, we need science that serves human liberation.

Read my editorial in BMJ Global Health here ↓
gh.bmj.com/content/10/6...

Advancing global health in an unprecedented (and unpredictable) era When BMJ Global Health launched 9 years ago, it positioned itself as a forum to address a fundamental, paternalistic information asymmetry in global health. To quote Dr. Seye Abimbola’s launch editori...

→ Finally, the effects of climate change disproportionately fall on vulnerable populations. Global health’s focus on ‘health over there’ must also reckon with its role in furthering this crisis.

Read more:

gh.bmj.com/content/10/3...

→ When current AI systems are literally incapable of generating images of a Black African doctor caring for a white child, we must acknowledge, address and combat AI's potential to perpetuate systemic racism.

→ The traditional global health focus on infectious disease, nutritional support, primary care, and maternal/child health has had the unintended consequence of deprioritising corridors of healthcare that many of us—who live in the Global North—take for granted. It's time for that change.

My introductory editorial for BMJ Global Health is out (link at the bottom of this thread):

Among our priorities:

→ The notion that global health is about health that happens ‘over there’ must end.

Thank you! Glad to have you on board!

Thank you!

Solving for Why Coaching | FREE Training Healthcare providers: your burnout ends here

Last thing.

Healthcare is a deeply exhausting profession. If you’re a provider (or you know one) who’s burning out, stagnating, or stuck, I’ve launched a new program

It uses decision science to help people figure out what they need to do for their next chapter

Quick video here:

solvingforwhy.co

Mark G. Shrime, MD, MPH, PhD Harvard-trained surgeon and decision scientist helping healthcare leaders overcome burnout, make confident career decisions, and find purpose through executive coaching.

Anyway. Today’s 4:30 post was more serious than usual. If you liked it, please repost!

And follow for more thoughts on health, global health, NYC, and occasionally faith

AND…I write weekly posts about decision science (it’s what my PhD is in). I do this on my mailing list.

home.markshrime.com

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You know. The disease that killed Emily Brontë. And Doc Holiday. That one

That’s the direction things are going. Isolationism WILL undermine your own right to health

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5. Even if you’re of the America First bent, withdrawing from the WHO is an outright terrrrible idea.

Why?

It puts our own national security at risk

I mean, the US is seeing its biggest documented outbreak of freaking tuberculosis ever right now

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Health, as defined by these international agreements, is “complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not just the absence of disease”

This…this is what we have a right to. This is what we deserve

Not capitalistic health insurance

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4. HEALTH INSURANCE IS NOT HEALTH

If I could scream this louder, I would. Health insurance is not health. Our inalienable human right to health isn’t a right to paying a yearly $10,000 fee to massive corporations just for the privilege of staying alive

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Because we’ve signed onto—and ratified—a bunch of other treaties that commit us to it

Here they are:

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mckinneylaw.iu.edu/practice/law...

3. It also means that, even though 2.0 has set our withdrawal from the WHO in motion last week, nothing changes about the US’s commitment to the human right to health

And not just because of the “unalienable” stuff.

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This means—crucially, given this last week—they aren’t given to us by a country or a law…and they can’t be taken away

Health, again, is one of those rights

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2. Human rights, to borrow the words of the US Declaration of Independence, are “unalienable.”

They’re inherent to us, simply because we’re human.

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As a human being, you have a right to health. Your neighbor, your children, your uncle, your boss, your employees…we all have a right to health

But what’s that mean?

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1. Health is a human right

This isn’t my opinion. It’s codified into about a dozen international human rights instruments.

The constitution of the WHO says it best: “the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental right of every human being”

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Since you all seemed to like the 4:30-on-a-Sunday-morning posts:

I’ve been a doctor for 24 years, and I’ve worked in global health for 17 of those. Here are five things I’ve learned, in view of *gestures broadly* this last week

Don’t hate me for number 4

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Thanks, Helen! Really appreciate it!

Sadly, I left Ireland and RCSI back in 2022. Firmly re-ensconced in NYC these days!

Since İCĘ can now raid hospitals…

Any lawyers in the crowd have a good resource for what healthcare providers are required to do during a raid? What remains protected health information, and what are we obligated to disclose about our patients?

Asking for a friend

5. The arc of the moral universe is long.

But it bends toward justice.

In the next four, eight, twelve years, be justice.

Not the retributive justice of those in power.

Instead, be the justice that brings down structures of dominance.

We can do this. Even if the arc is long.

#inauguration

When the crowd went to stone the woman caught in adultery in John 8, they were doing EXACTLY what their scripture told them they were supposed to do. They were in the right. They were SUPPOSED to kill her, according to their understanding of scripture

Jesus still stopped them.

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4. They were convinced they were right.

Don't be surprised to hear your religious siblings tell you that they're right, that they're following the Bible, that they're doing God's will. Don't be surprised to hear sermons against those dirty people at the margins.

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3. They chose Barabbas

Speaking of (insurrectionist) similarities...

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The similarity could not be more stark.

No idea what direction these next four years will go, but we can't forget that, at least for a little bit, Jesus's message did NOT win

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2. And they killed him for it.

I'm SO desperate to sugarcoat this. To pretend violence won't happen this time around.

But the fact is, Jesus was put to actual death by the political powers of his day, at the EXPLICIT request of the religious powers of his day.

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1. This isn't the first time, nor the last time, that religion is used to oppress those at the margins.

Heck, that was literally Jesus's message

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Today's a hard one.

For so many of us (brown, Black, LGBTQIA+, trans, poly, disabled, women, undocumented, incarcerated, you name it...) today is rough.

Today marks the consummation of an unholy union between religion and political power.

5 thoughts, from growing up in the Evangelical church.

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