Dartmouth Events

The Rabbi Marshall Meyer Great Issues Lecture on Social Justice.

Since the early 1600s, myths about Black bodies were deemed abnormal and used to justify slavery and white supremacy. Slaves were thought to be physiologically insensitive to pain and suffering, making it acceptable to experiment on them without anesthesia or consent. When Dr. Zha graduated in 2016 from Geisel Medical School, half of the white medical trainees still endorsed at least one racist myth about Black bodies. It's no wonder that racial inequity is still our reality. Compared to white patients, Black patients' pain is twice as likely to be underestimated; Black children with appendicitis are 10 times less likely to receive pain medicine; Black birthing people are dying at four to five times the rate and their babies twice the rate. When it comes to medical racism, the past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

In the fall of 2023, Dr. Zha took a break from clinical medicine and went on a quest to re-educate herself. Awarded the NERFC fellowship by the Massachusetts Historical Society,she researched the hidden history of American medicine at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, Smith College, and Brown University. After studying 34 archives, and 92 boxes of files, it became clear: medical racism is a tale as old as time. And all of us must work to break this vicious cycle.

---

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Please click here to reserve your ticket on eventbrite. 

The event will also be recorded and livestreamed. Please click here to sign up for the livestream.

---

Mengyi “Zed” Zha, MED’16, MD, FAACP, is board-certified in family medicine and fellowship trained in non-cosmetic dermatology.  Currently, she works to provide dermatological access to the immigrant and farmworker communities in rural Washington.  Prior to that, she practiced full-scope primary care with obstetrics and hospital medicine in rural Washington State during the pandemic years and served as the COVID-19 Task Force Physician Lead.  

She started life in China with a perinatal diagnosis of brain damage followed by placement in a state orphanage, against the wishes of her mother.  Her mother’s subsequent midnight retrieval of her child is a narrative that kicks off Dr. Zha’s life fighting misogyny and racial bigotry through elevation of the patient voice in all encounters.  Through her Op Eds, newsletter, blog, and books, she challenges the state of medicine, including the medical education culture, medical ethics, medical social justice.  Her forthcoming book, Consented, addresses the pervasive culture of silencing the patient voice through clinical encounters, and offers different ways to change the narrative.

---

Co-sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, The Tucker Center for a Spiritual and Ethical Life, the Jewish Studies Program. Made possible by a gift from Marina and Andrew Lewin '81.