Sitting in Our Discomfort

Abstract

The large conference room was filled with clinicians. I felt a rush of anxiety and excitement as I saw the massive audience; clinicians needed to hear what I had to say, and our patients and trainees needed them to hear it. As I stood in the back, listening to the preceding speaker bring his talk to an end, I observed the audience sitting on the edge of their seats, clinging to the words of the older, thin, White man at the podium. Clinicians were eager to gain his insight into managing obesity, a problem that affects so many of our patients. As I moved to the front of the room, I observed the crowd from a different angle, scanning the audience: not one empty chair. I was hopeful because Covid had put the spotlight back on health disparities, and the death of George Floyd, among others, had forced medicine to reckon with the fact that we do not exist in a social vacuum. Now seemed to be the time, and I was ready.