Grist – May 4, 2021
Patients trust their doctors with the intimate details of their lives, including struggles with housing, racism, or the immigration system. Gaurab Basu considers this a privilege. All healthcare providers are storytellers, and they can use these anecdotes to foster systemic change. The Center for Health Equity strives to equip them with the skills they need to advocate for better policies. What galvanized Basu was the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which chronicled the threats to everything he cares about as a doctor — dignity, equity, justice, health. He jumped into creating new curricula for medical professionals incorporating climate and equity; writing op-eds about planetary and human well-being; testifying about how to bring health into decisions about building or transportation policy; and generally mobilizing others to make these connections. “I get excited about a world in which we do this right,” he says.
