Sociology Student: Skin Tone and Textbooks

sociology student: The experience in 2012 led the sociology student who was studying at the University of British Columbia UBC at the time to analyze faces in four textbooks widely used in North American medical schools, according to Toronto Star. She concluded in an honours thesis that racial diversity was being ignored. She wondered if medical textbooks would also reflect what she considered to be a biased portrayal of Canada's diverse population. Most images in medical books are of legs, arms and chests, showing only skin tone, not ethnicity, so Louie broadened her research as a master's student at the University of Toronto and focused on skin tone in more than 4,000 images in later versions of the same textbooks. Imagery of six common cancers for people of colour or dark skin tone hardly exist in the textbooks, says the study, which suggests unequal health care could result. Read more Opinion Adam Kassam It's time for fresh new leadership in health care Article Continued Below Report says Indigenous people in Toronto are far more likely to be homeless, unemployed and hungry Province aims to hand back' health-care decisions to First Nations within years The study by Louie and co-author Rima Wilkes, a sociology professor at UBC, found the proportion of dark skin tones represented was very small in images featured in Atlas of Human Anatomy, Bates' Guide to Physical Examinations and History Taking, Clinically Oriented Anatomy and Gray's Anatomy for Students. react-empty 161 Atlas had fewer than 1 per cent of photos featuring dark skin, while the highest amount 5 per cent was included in Gray's, the researchers say in the study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.