This concise yet inclusive text provides an impressive account of the many interconnected forces that have influenced health equity. In the present political environment, in which decades of gains—including equal access to health care and affirmative policies that ensure equal access to education and employment—are being eroded

Choice Reviews

McBride’s excellent history, which includes a bibliographic essay, will guide students and other researchers while inspiring the public to call for more action to ensure health justice.

Booklist

“This elegant book grounds the history of African American experience with healing firmly in the broader social movements for equality. McBride highlights the distinct motivations that underlay struggles for medical and hospital care, environmental and social justice, positing that equality is foundational in understanding it origins and broader meaning. This is a heartfelt and important premise, one that is rarely noted by American medical historians. McBride’s book should be read by all who seek to understand the social basis of American health movements.”

David K. Rosner, Columbia University

African Americans today continue to suffer disproportionately from heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. In Caring for Equality, David McBride chronicles the struggle by African Americans and their white allies to improve poor black health conditions as well as inadequate medical care—caused by slavery, racism, and discrimination—since the arrival of African slaves in America. Black American health progress resulted from the steady influence of what David McBride calls the health equality ideal: the principle that health of black Americans could and should be equal to that of whites and other Americans. Including a timeline, selected primary sources, and an extensive bibliographic essay, McBride’s book provides a superb starting point for students and readers who want to explore in greater depth this important and understudied topic in African American history.

Washington Informer

“An incredible story of persistence, passion, dedication and commitment to health equity, David McBride movingly shows how African American medical professionals were essential parts of black communities furnishing indispensable services and equally important providing a vision of what was possible – a society based on fairness, quality health care and justice. Waves of extraordinarily dedicated, innovative and brilliant activists arose generation after generation to address the enduring challenges of segregation, discrimination and outright racial repression in America’s medical care system. This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about the enduring struggle to achieve equality in health care in America.”

Gerald Markowitz, John Jay College – CUNY

“Caring for Equality is the right prescription for a short and readable history about African American and health care. From the healing science of slave women to community efforts to face the AIDS epidemic, McBride provides a thoughtful and succinct guide for what he calls the health equality ideal in American history. A must read for anyone who wants to understand how health disparities are created and the struggles to overcome them.”

Susan M. Reverby, McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women's Studies, Wellesley College