[PHILOS-L] CFA: Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Annual Workshop on “Concepts of Race & Ethnicity in Health Care ” October 30-31, 2024 at King’s College London
Rivkah Hatchwell
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Call For Abstracts – Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Annual Workshop on “Concepts of Race & Ethnicity in Health Care ”
October 30-31, 2024 at King’s College London
While concepts such as race and ethnicity play a central role in much contemporary discourse, a commonly held view (in academia and society more generally) is that race is a social construct – that race is only relevant because of legacies of colonialism, systemic racism, and other forces that embed racial inequality into society. However, the widespread use of racial classifications in medical practice seems to be at odds with such an account. How should we understand the relevance of racial and ethnic classifications to medical science and intervention, including diagnosis, prognosis and treatment?
One possible answer is that racial prejudices and inequalities have consequences that affect medicine, for example by producing health inequalities, which have observable effects in the biological as well as the social world. While this is certainly part of the answer, it arguably is not complete. Inequalities cannot explain, for example, the use of racial or ethnic classifications for genetic screening. Medicine is a practice which necessarily operates at the intersection of the biomedical sciences and the socio-cultural world; as such medical racial discourse is not easily conceptualised as belonging to either. This raises particular challenges for health care and its philosophy.
We invite papers on the intersection between philosophy of race and philosophy of medicine. While we acknowledge that questions in this area inherently bear upon questions of concern to ethics and bioethics, we particularly welcome submissions that engage with topics in the philosophy of science, including metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of the special sciences.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- How should we conceptualise race in medicine?
- How do racial and ethnic categories in medicine relate to traditional questions about kinds and categories in the philosophy of science?
- What is the epistemic value, if any, of racial and ethnic classifications in medicine?
- What sort of data about race and ethnicity is it appropriate to use and to collect in medical statistics and epidemiology, and why?
- Are we ever justified in using racial and ethnic information about a patient to determine the correct diagnosis or intervention? If so, when?
- How (if at all) is use of racial and ethnic information in health care different from its use for other public projects such as e.g. policing, social insurance, and so on?
The workshop will be held from October 30-31 at Kings College London and will be followed by the Annual Sowerby Lecture, given by Professor. Quayshawn Spencer (UPenn), on the evening of October 31st.
Abstracts should be prepared for blind review and submitted as a pdf or Word document to phila...@kcl.ac.uk by September 6th. We will notify you of our decision by the week beginning September 16th. Speakers will have 30 minutes for their talk and an additional 30 minutes for Q&A. Some funds for travel and accommodation are available.
We especially encourage members of marginalized groups to apply in recognition of the underrepresentation in Philosophy and Medicine of members of certain marginalized groups, including ethnic minorities, women, persons with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and others, and the deficits this creates in philosophical and medical research and governance.
The Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine project is a joint initiative of the Peter Sowerby Foundation and King’s College London. The project works to bring together healthcare professionals and philosophers working at the intersection of philosophy and medicine, exploring the ways that philosophical research can enrich medical research and practice and vice versa.
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