Epidemiology Counts – Episode 25 – Racialized Policing

Epidemiology Counts from the Society for Epidemiologic Research

By nearly any metric, Black and brown Americans are disproportionately policed, arrested, convicted, and incarcerated compared to white Americans. One in 3 Black boys born in America in 2001 can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Furthermore, Black Americans are more likely to be physically injured and killed at the hands of the police—a reality that manifested in the dramatic response to the killing of George Floyd and other high profile cases, leading to Black Lives Matter protests around the nation and the world. Racialized policing is rooted in our country’s history and legacy of systemic racism, and has substantial negative effects on the health and well being of communities of color. Living under constant threat of surveillance takes a toll on mental and physical health and can lead to and exacerbate racial health disparities. In this episode, Bryan James is joined by John Pamplin, a Provost’s postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Urban Science & Progress at New York University, as well as the Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, as well as Roland Thorpe, professor in the department of health, behavior, and society at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. They discuss the historical and structural causes of racialized policing, its effect on health, the “myths” used to justify it, and end with some ideas on what we can do about it.