race

Stat’s Eric Boodman looks at how Black women with ankylosing spondylitis have been ignored and overlooked by the medical profession. Long considered a disease of young white men—when I was diagnosed at 25, I had what was seen as a typical case—AS has since been proven to be just as prevalent in women, and not just a white illness either. “Gibson sees it as a self-replicating hypothesis: AS is deemed rare in Black women, so doctors give it little weight as a possible diagnosis. It’s hard to include in research what hasn’t been diagnosed.”