Curry Common Read: Educated

This week we are focusing on healthcare disparities, medical mistrust across communities, and perceptions of rural mental health. In Educated, Tara Westover's family had a deep mistrust of the medical establishment which resulted in refusing to see a doctor in cases of need and discrediting modern medicine. Unfortunately, this mistrust is not an isolated phenomena and is far from uncommon. For many groups, the fear and suspicion is based on years of systematic racism and oppression. For others, a lack of access and investment in their communities further widens the divide. Although you may, at first, read the Westover family's perspective with a sensationalist lens, I would encourage you to dive deeper into the issues at hand. The resources below offer varying perspectives.

This special issue of Behavioral Medicine showcases nine articles exploring medical mistrust among diverse populations, exploring a wide array of topics and spanning myriad methodologies. In addition to a rigorous systematic review of the literature, this issue covers several critical subareas of the health disparities literature, including preventative health screenings among Black men, discrimination and cultural factors among rural Latinx communities, health care satisfaction among Latina immigrant women, the complex relationship between HIV testing and “conspiracy beliefs” among Black populations, pre-exposure prophylaxis use among transgender women, the impacts of mass incarceration on HIV care, eHealth interventions to address chronic diseases among sexual minority men of color, and participatory research to engage underserved populations as co-researchers.

This National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) presentation provides an overview of mental health in non-metropolitan areas of the United States, looking at the critical issues facing rural residents and their systems of care. There is not “one rural America,” and the session provides examples of unique responses to the challenges of serving rural communities.