How the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated racial disparities in health care

When Thomas Fisher, MD, started work on what would become “The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER” (One World, 2022), the COVID-19 pandemic was still months away. Fisher, an emergency physician at UChicago Medicine, had intended to write a book about racial disparities in health and health care, neglect of Black communities, and the failures of the American health care system—never imagining that a once-in-a-century crisis would so suddenly and painfully illustrate his point.