Keisha Ray, PhD
For media inquiries and other contact needs: Keisha.S.Ray@uth.tmc.edu
Biography
Professor Keisha Ray received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Utah. She is currently a tenured Associate Professor and holds the John P. McGovern, MD Professorship of Oslerian Medicine at the McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics at UT Health Houston, where she also serves as the Director of the Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration. Most of Dr. Ray’s work focuses on the effects of institutional racism on Black people's health, highlighting Black people's own stories, and the sociopolitical implications of biomedical enhancement. Her work uniquely prioritizes linguistic justice as a matter of access and commitment to public scholarship. Dr. Ray serves as an associate editor for the American Journal of Bioethics and its online site, "Bioethics Today" as well as Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Medical Humanities. Dr. Ray has also been elected as a Hastings Center Fellow. She has contributed to top clinical, bioethics, and medical humanities journals. And based on her expertise, Dr. Ray is frequently called upon as a bioethics expert for popular news sources. Lastly, Dr. Ray is the author of the book “Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People’s Health” with Oxford University Press.
Available at Oxford University Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere books are sold
Reviews of Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People's Health
"Dr. Ray brilliantly amplifies the lived experiences of Black individuals and patients to call attention to long-standing health and health care inequities driven by structural and systemic forces. This timely and humanizing book clearly demonstrates why current and future health care professionals should care about social and structural determinants of health." -- Faith E. Fletcher, PhD
"Bioethics has not always engaged directly the serious ethical problems regarding health and health care disparities along racialized and gender lines. Dr. Ray tackles these issues head on. She does so in a manner that is accessible and straightforward while raising what is ethically and professionally at stake. I recommend that all of us working in this area read this book." -- Patrick T. Smith, PhD
"Black Health is a call for bioethics to concern itself with histories and futures alike. Ray strikes a balance between a realistic telling of history --a history that's laden with blatant racism, at that--and a call for hope. If the field reckons with the widespread anti-Blackness that pervades it, a better bioethics is possible." -- Bioethics Today
"Black Health is a monumental contribution to bioethics and contemporary race theory that illuminates the role health disparities have in the maintenance of anti-Black racism. Carefully attending to the consequences of illness and loss, Black Health is a clarion call urging bioethicists and clinicians to attend to the sickness created by racism and the indifference shown towards Black life by the medical community at large." -- Tommy J. Curry, PhD
