Editors' Note

The symposium in this issue is titled "Experiencing Racism in Health Care: Stories from Health Care Professionals." The editors thank the Centene Charitable Foundation for a gift that supported the publication of this issue and an accompanying open-access VOICES edition of the symposium.

The problem of racism toward healthcare professionals has far-reaching implications for health care professionals themselves, their patients, and society. Minority health care professionals face discrimination in their clinical roles by patients, colleagues, supervisors and instructors. Some of this behavior is overt and reveals conscious racial discrimination. Other times, it is supported by the unconscious bias of individuals or institutional policies. The problem of racism in health care has far-reaching implications for health care professionals, their patients, and society. The symposium presents a collection of stories by physicians, trainees, nurses, chaplains, social workers, and other health care workers from underrepresented racial groups. These stories detail the authors' first-hand experience with racism in the workplace or during training.

When author Dr. Zaiba Jetpuri was just 18 and dreaming of being a physician, she went to interview for her first job as a scribe. "When I arrived at the office to meet [the hiring physician] I could sense something was 'off.' … [S]he said I couldn't wear my headscarf (hijab) to work. 'Wearing your headscarf here would make my patients scared.'" Jetpuri was told to "think about it." She sent several follow up emails and even asked her Imam to write an email explaining the tradition of wearing a hijab, but the hiring physician would not change her policy. Jetpuri goes on to say, "I told myself I didn't want this job bad enough to compromise my own integrity, and if this is what doctors' offices are like, then it is not for me; and I let the dream go for a while. Medicine always kept calling to me, and I eventually found other experiences to help my resume when I applied to med school."

In his story, "Chronicles of a Culturally Grounded Chaplain," Mr. Calvin Bradley Jr. recounts, "When I began my career in healthcare chaplaincy, I was invited to have a seat at several "tables." From leadership councils to special committees, I was constantly being invited to serve. […] I began using my voice and pastoral authority to advocate more for my patients, bring awareness to inequities within the systems I served, and challenge the status quo. […] As my passion and influence grew, I was quietly and conveniently uninvited to the next meeting. In some cases, whole projects and committees were completely dismantled, some reestablished under new facades. Ideas I had previously shared that were once downplayed as unreasonable or impossible suddenly became action items and were attributed to being the brilliant ideas of others."

The symposium editor, Gloria A. Wilder, is a pediatrician, public speaker, expert on poverty and social justice, and the Vice President of Innovation and Preventive Health at the Centene Corporation. Three commentary articles, written by Aletha Maybank & Fernando De Maio, Elena Rios, and Nathalie Égalité offer important insights into the authors' stories. Égalité observes, "These narratives likewise include thoughtful considerations on the difficult balance between the pursuit of individual virtues and the creation of systemic conditions necessary to eliminate racial injustice. The recommendations they provide on ameliorating knowledge of racism inspire readers to go beyond the ethical act of testimonial exchange toward the creation of transformative social change."

The research article in this issue, "We're Not Moving Forward": Carers' Demand for Novel Research and Effective interventions for Psychotic Disorders," was written by Paolo Corsico.¹ The article presents findings from focus groups with caregivers of individuals who have experienced psychosis. The author conducted three focus groups with caregivers. The focus group discussions centered around a case study vignette about neurobiological research, with time allotted to discuss the ethical issues of translating research to clinical care. Each caregiver was a close family member of the person with a psychotic disorder or mental health diagnosis. Notably, many of the most debated themes in ethics literature on psychosis and neurobiological research—such as mental capacity...