Howard Bauchner, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into a JAMA Network podcast on structural racism in medicine, the New York Times reports.
In that February podcast, which has since been deleted, Edward Livingston, then the deputy editor at JAMA, said, according to MedPage Today, that "[s]tructural racism is an unfortunate term. Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help. Many of us are offended by the concept that we are racist."
As the Times notes, the podcast episode was further promoted on Twitter with the tagline of "No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?" This, it and MedPage Today report, was met with a swift backlash, and Livingston resigned.
Some critics have pushed for a more thorough review of the editorial process at JAMA, sending both letters to the AMA and starting a petition, the Times adds.
"Hopefully, this signifies an increased effort to diversify the staff at JAMA, as increased diversity will provide additional viewpoints on issues surrounding ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status," Steven Bradley from the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and host of The Black Doctor Podcast tells WebMD.