Rhea W. Boyd is an Americanpediatrician and child and community health advocate. Boyd is a popular science communicator, making use of social media to amplify a diverse range of voices in an effort to improve the heath of communities of colour.
Boyd works as a clinical physician. Since she has partnered with San Diego 211 as chief medical officer. Boyd has taught academic programs on structural inequality and health. She specialises in child and community health. She has worked with physicians, professional bodies, local organizers and tech founders in the San Francisco Bay Area to increase access to health services. Following the success of her early blogging experience, Boyd launched an independent platform, where she discussed the intersection of race, gender and health. Boyd is particularly concerned about the impact of police brutality on the health and wellbeing of Black boys and men. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Boyd has spoken about the health disparities experienced by Black Americans. In response to the murder of George Floyd, Boyd became more involved with political activism and the fight for social justice. Boyd was one of many physicians who supported the George Floyd protests throughout the pandemic, saying “protest is a profound public health intervention”. In an interview with Time magazine, Boyd said, “If people were to understand that racism, and all of the social and political and economic inequalities that racism creates, ultimately harms people’s health. they would see that protest is a profound public health intervention, because it allows us to finally address and end forms of inequality,”. On June 17, 2020, Boyd gave expert testimony to the U.S. Congress' House of Representatives' House Committee on Energy and Commerce on “Health Care Inequality: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 and the Health Care System”. Boyd worked with Monica McLemore to devise new standards on publishing racial health inequities. Unfortunately, the academic publishing process has allowed scholarship that confuses and often attempts to minimise the role of racism in determining health outcomes. Boyd and McLemore believe that “the solution to racial health inequities is to address racism and its attendant harms and erect a new health care infrastructure that no longer profits from the persistence of inequitable disease”.Their suggestions included; Denouncing Biological Race And The Insidious Harms Of Patient Blame, to stop Obfuscating The Role Of Racism In Determining Health And Health Care and the implementation of more Rigorous Standards For Publishing On Racial Health Inequities.
