Dr. Tawainna Houston's BLACK WELLNESS BARRIERS: Understanding the Root Cause of Disease Vulnerabilities as a Pathway Towards Restoring Health looks at the social injustices, both historical and current, that impact the physical, psychological, and social well-being of African Americans. Houston shows how a cobweb of interacting social factors (historical injustices that impact children throughout generations, economic factors, social living conditions, environmental toxins, educational disparities, spiritual oppression, food zones, public health care, and the sidelining of African knowledge systems) combine to impact the health of Black bodies.
Dr. Houston is a naturopath, and she provides insight into illnesses such as diabetes, low birthweight, cancer, autoimmune disease, and metabolic health conditions—showing their social roots and how they're passed on from generation to generation. She notes that these conditions "disproportionately affect Black mothers, infants, and subsequent generations," showing how diagnosis itself compounds existing burdens through pregnancy and delivery. She later explains how policy change, social activism, and mind-body-spirit practices help work towards vital social and embodied changes.
This is a harrowing book to read, but it's highly informative. Each section is so clearly explained that the reader comes away with a completely different understanding of health conditions relating to individual behaviors or genetic vulnerability. It's both scientific and humane, written without the objective distance of an academic text. Sections flow clearly from one to the other, helping the reader understand highly abstract material. Medical solutions offer African American readers pathways towards improved health and an understanding of restored health. Policy makers have the opportunity to work towards deeper change within various institutions.
One area where the book might have gone further: while BLACK WELLNESS BARRIERS does note that African Americans could benefit from therapy to improve mental health, it might be worth adding the importance of ensuring that one's therapist is aware of the impacts of structural racism. The politics behind it, too, so that clients don't end up bearing the weight of misunderstanding.
BLACK WELLNESS BARRIERS is an exceptional book for Black readers, allies, people wishing to learn more about social injustice, medical practitioners, and community leaders who wish to enact change. Informative and shocking, this is significant reading. Given how these injustices are ongoing, one may even go a step further and say it's urgent reading.
Dr. Tawainna Houston's BLACK WELLNESS BARRIERS: Understanding the Root Cause of Disease Vulnerabilities as a Pathway Towards Restoring Health is insightful, rigorous, and long overdue. Every reader who encounters it will come away changed.
~Nicci Attfield for IndieReader