Abstract:
Despite an overwhelming interest from anesthesiology residents in the United States to participate in global health, too often global health outreach in anesthesiology is misconstrued as being synonymous with “mission trips” to provide clinical care (J Clin Anesth 2012;24:38-43). This reflects an outdated and inadequately decolonized understanding of global health within our field, and we must shed the misperception that global health is something that is only done elsewhere to serve communities other than our own. COVID-19 has laid bare the fact that inequities and the structural violence that holds them in place are as relevant in wealthy countries as they are in less economically advanced parts of the world. The deep roots of these inequities, from systemic racism to capitalism, have a profound impact on the care anesthesiologists provide and on the perioperative outcomes of our...
