The way we engage with marginalised communities, our research and our colleagues has to be reassessed

Let me get straight to the point. Systemic and institutional racism is affecting the lives of black and brown people right now, across the world in adverse ways. In the healthcare sector it not only damages our health, it can kill, and it does. The need to address and have important, sometimes uncomfortable, conversations on how we can tackle systemic and institutional racism in healthcare has become a topical issue heightened by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. His cries of: ‘I can’t breathe!’ reverberated around the world leading to the largest protests in history, and the global Black Lives Matter movement, which saw between 15-26 million people worldwide protest inequalities.