It’s no longer a surprise that the race and ethnicity of a patient influence their health outcomes. But back in the 1990s, when Dr. Lisa Cooper first documented and published findings that supported the role of patient race on the quality of physician-patient interactions, these were groundbreaking, even radical ideas. Today. Dr. Cooper, a physician and social epidemiologist, is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and a Bloomberg Distinguished professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has designed innovative approaches to improve physicians communication skills and the ability of healthcare organizations to address health disparities. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In this conversation, we discuss her international upbringing, implicit bias in medicine, what good physician-patient relationships look like, and how we can more effectively prepare doctors to create a more equitable future.In this episode, you will hear about:Dr. Cooper’s international upbringing and how an early understanding of privilege shaped her career path - 2:21How privilege can change based on community and culture, and how Dr. Cooper experienced this shift - 7:25The observations Dr. Cooper made early in her career that led her to study how race and class impacts health outcomes in America - 12:58Facing stereotypes in a culture that is not your culture of origin - 18:44How Dr. Cooper began her research on racial inequities in health and the findings from those initial studies - 26:48The unrecognized assumptions that doctors are taught to make when it comes to patient care - 32:56How physicians can learn to take better care of patients from all backgrounds - 38:36The current state of medical education around implicit bias training and racial disparities - 46:40Dr. Cooper’s advice to her younger self - 52:53Dr. Cooper is the author of several highly-regarded medical research papers; in this episode we discussed Race, Gender, and Partnership in the Patient-Physician Relationship (1999), published by Journal of the American Medical Association.You can follow Dr. Lisa Cooper on Twitter @LisaCooperMD.Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2023