Northeastern’s Health Disparities Student Collaborative

Northeastern’s Health Disparities Student Collaborative

By Chloe Nobuhara, Behavioral Neuroscience, 2017

When someone mentions the field of medicine, what comes first to mind? Maybe you think of cutting-edge research on breast cancer, or perhaps you envision a thrilling image of the da Vinci Surgical System.

Either way, the thoughts on the forefronts of our minds are most likely the pioneering and the exciting — the most advanced aspects of the field. But while innovations for a cure are indeed deserving of our attention, they often overshadow what affects the greatest amount of people.

The great paradox of the American health care system is that the diseases doing the most harm to our population are the ones we already know how to treat. This is the crux of health disparities.

Health disparities describe the inequalities in disease that adversely affect specific populations, often which happen to be the most marginalized groups as well. For example, a black American woman can be up to three times more likely to have her child die within the first year of life in comparison to a white woman.

Even if both women have graduated from college, the vast disparity in infant mortality rates still exists — perhaps due to race-relations with practitioners or stress from institutionalized racism.

In many instances of such inequities, the only determinants of health are social constructs and therefore can be improved.

Northeastern’s Health Disparities Student Collaborative (HDSC) attempts to raise awareness on the intersection between systematic oppression and health through fundraising, volunteering and mentoring events.

While we may not discuss the flashiest facts on the forefront of medicine, HDSC addresses often the most overlooked core of the ills in our community.