Under the Skin

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES The first book to tell the full story of race and health in America today, showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of the nation. In the US, Black people have poorer health outcomes than white people at every stage of their lives: Black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die at birth or in the first year of life; Blacks in every age-group under sixty-five have significantly higher death rates than whites. Racial disparities in healthcare are impossible to ignore, and yet they have never been fully investigated until now. In Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa reveals the elements in the American healthcare system and society that cause Black people to ‘live sicker and die quicker’. Today’s medical texts and instruments still carry slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and