Feinberg Perspectives

As COVID-19 cases started to spike across the U.S., rates of infection, hospitalization and death disproportionately afflicted Black Americans. In May, George Floyd, a Black man who had recovered from COVID, was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer, igniting waves of protests in every state. Dr. Quentin Youmans, a resident physician in the Feinberg Department of Medicine, addresses the intersection of these two pandemics - coronavirus and racism - and what protesting in medicine might look like. Dr. Youmans is also the founder of Feinberg's STRIVE mentorship program, which connects underrepresented minority medical students with underrepresented resident mentors.   An original version of this essay co-written with Dr. Jason Williams at Duke University Medical Center first appeared in the American College of Cardiology in June 2020.