Thank you to the Albany Medical Center System Board of Directors, on which I have served for the past 5 years, for dedicating our recent retreat to race and racism in healthcare. I appreciate Mr. Robert T. Cushing, Board Chair, and Dr. Janice White, Governance Committee Chair, for their leadership of this effort, and Dr. Dennis P. McKenna, President and CEO, and Ms. Christine Hayes, Senior Associate Counsel, for their support.
In preparation for the retreat, my colleagues and I read Linda Villarosa's Under the Skin, The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America, a 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist (General Nonfiction), which offers an historical--and heartbreaking--analysis of racial disparities in American healthcare. In addition to discussing the book, we learned more about intersectionality, cultural humility, systemic racism, racial equity, and other topics in presentations, small group activities, and opportunities for individual reflection with the guidance of Tangible Development, LLC.
As Linda Villarosa wrote in the conclusion to Under the Skin, "We can no longer look away from the impact of the racial health disparities that have been part of the American story since the beginning of our nation. This is not how a just society treats a segment of its population." I join my colleagues in a commitment to equity, and I Iook forward to the next Albany Med Health System retreat on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The Capital Region of New York's only freestanding, regionally governed, not-for-profit health system, the Albany Med Health System includes Albany Medical Center; Albany Medical College, one of the nation's oldest medical schools; Visiting Nurses; Columbia Memorial Health, Glens Falls Hospital, and Saratoga Hospital; and Albany Med Physicians Group of 500. Harnessing the collective expertise of each organization, the System has 1,520 hospital beds, more than 800 physicians, and 125 locations serving three million people in 25 counties. The System is among the region’s largest private-sector employers with more than 16,000 employees.
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