Eugene T Richardson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1252825 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eugene T Richardson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eugene T |
| FAMILY NAME | Richardson |
| SIGNATURE | RICHARDSON E T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brigham and Women's Hospital |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8437-0671 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
A plan for black American reparations
The frequent criticism of a programme of reparations for Black Americans is that, however justified, no feasible blueprint exists for its implementation. We provide a detailed outline of a viable plan for reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the USA. Central to the plan are monetary payments calculated to eliminate the racial wealth gap, the foremost economic indicator of the cumulative, intergenerational effects of W…
Reparations for Caribbean slavery and the potential impact on human well-being
The reparations movement has emerged as a critical global force addressing the historical injustices of slavery, colonialism and underdevelopment. Grounded in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the movement has gained momentum through regional bodies like the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission (CRC). This article examines the intersection of colonialism, enslavement and contempora…
Climate reparations for threats to health
Climate change is already leading to loss of health for some people and this is expected to intensify as climate change increases. Moreover, ill health from climate change is experienced unevenly: overall, those who have been least responsible for causing the problem are often those most vulnerable to these losses due to the intersection of climate-related health threats with structural inequality. In this context, there have been multiple argume…
Reparations and distributive justice in global health
box Reparations are a global health imperative
Structural adjustment
Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank implemented neoliberal structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) across most countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. SAPs imposed austerity, privatisation and economic deregulation and have been associated with severe negative impacts on human welfare, including (a) declining real wages and working-class consumption in some regions, (b) increased rates o…
Overlooked toll of climate change on migrant children in the Americas
Building reparative futures demands a reckoning with the crisis form of global health
Recent cuts to global health funding and US withdrawal from the World Health Organization have generated claims that global health has entered a new crisis. This essay argues that such accounts misread the present moment. The better view is that global health operates through a ‘crisis form’, a modality of governance in which structural inequality is treated as ordinary, acute disruptions (Big Events) are framed as emergencies, and responses to B…
Long-term psychosocial sequelae of Ebola virus disease among survivors compared with contacts following the 2013–2016 epidemic in Liberia
Long-term psychosocial sequelae of Ebola virus disease (EVD) survivors are poorly understood. We conducted a cross-sectional study of a cohort of EVD survivors and their uninfected contacts in Liberia. Beginning in November 2019, we consecutively sampled eligible participants until the end of the parent study follow up. Enrolled participants completed a questionnaire administered by trained study staff. Outcome measurements were symptoms of depre…
Post-Omicron Sars-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in Sierra Leone
Based on a serosurvey conducted in March 2021, Barrie and colleagues published the first nationally representative SARS-CoV-2 serosurvey in Africa, estimating a SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence of 2.6% in Sierra Leone, 43 times higher than the reported number of cases at that time. Over the following two years, increasingly transmissible variants—specifically Delta and Omicron—proliferated across the globe, and their impact in Africa is poorly understoo…
Representations of an Ebola ‘outbreak’ through Story Technologies
Background Attempts to understand biosocial phenomena using scientific methods are often presented as value-neutral and objective; however, when used to reduce the complexity of open systems such as epidemics, these forms of inquiry necessarily entail normative considerations and are therefore fashioned by political worldviews (ideologies). From the standpoint of poststructural theory, the character of these representations is at most limited and…
Global vaccine equity demands reparative justice — not charity
By late April, more than 80% of the world's COVID-19 vaccines had gone to people in wealthy countries, with just 0.3% to people in low-income countries.1 This reprehensible imbalance is no accident. High-income countries have used neocolonial negotiating power, global policy leverage and capital to procure enough doses to cover 245% of their citizens while leaving few doses for poorer countries.2 As a result, lower-income countries may not be abl…
Sars-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in Sierra Leone, March 2021
INTRODUCTION: As of 26 March 2021, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had reported 4 159 055 cases of COVID-19 and 111 357 deaths among the 55 African Union member states; however, no country has published a nationally representative serosurvey as of October 2021. Such data are vital for understanding the pandemic's progression on the continent, evaluating containment measures, and policy planning. METHODS: We conducted a cross…
Reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. and their potential impact on Sars-CoV-2 transmission
Pandemicity, Covid-19 and the limits of public health ‘science’
box > “No man is an island, > > entire of itself; > > each is a piece of the continent, > > a part of the main. > > If a clod be washed away by the sea, > > Europe is the less, > > as well as if a promontory were, > > as well as if a manor of thy friend’s > > or of thine own were. > > Each man’s death diminishes me, > > for I am involved in mankind. > > And therefore never send to know > > for whom the bell tolls; > > it tolls for thee.” John Don…
Epidemic Illusions
A physician-anthropologist explores how public health practices—from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment—help perpetuate global inequities. In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices—from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference—play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities. Drawing on postcolonial t…
On the coloniality of global public health
The continued inordinate demise from communicable pathogens in the global South is not the result of an intractable problem thwarting our best efforts to prevent and cure disease; we have the means. Rather, as an accomplice to contemporary imperialism, public health manages (as a profession) and maintains (as an academic discipline) global health inequity. It does this through 'bourgeois empiricist' models of disease causation, which serve protec…
Indirect rule redux
This article explores the relationship between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the political economy of diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone. The authors argue that foreign companies have recycled colonial strategies of indirect rule to facilitate the illicit flow of resources out of Sierra Leone. Drawing on field research conducted during the outbreak and in its aftermath, they show how this 'indirect rule redux' undermines democratic …
The symbolic violence of 'outbreak
The global response to HIV in men who have sex with men
Forced removals embodied as tuberculosis
South Africa has one of the worst tuberculosis burdens in the world. Several ecological forces have contributed to this, including high HIV prevalence; failing TB control strategies; crowded, poorly ventilated indoor environments-including the complex web of political and economic interests which produce them; the development of racial capitalism; and mining and migration. In the following study, we measure CO2 levels in public transport to inves…
On the coloniality of global public health
The continued inordinate demise from communicable pathogens in the global South is not the result of an intractable problem thwarting our best efforts to prevent and cure disease; we have the means. Rather, as an accomplice to contemporary imperialism, public health manages (as a profession) and maintains (as an academic discipline) global health inequity. It does this through 'bourgeois empiricist' models of disease causation, which serve protec…
Reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. and their potential impact on Sars-CoV-2 transmission
The symbolic violence of 'outbreak
Indirect rule redux
This article explores the relationship between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the political economy of diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone. The authors argue that foreign companies have recycled colonial strategies of indirect rule to facilitate the illicit flow of resources out of Sierra Leone. Drawing on field research conducted during the outbreak and in its aftermath, they show how this 'indirect rule redux' undermines democratic …
Forced removals embodied as tuberculosis
South Africa has one of the worst tuberculosis burdens in the world. Several ecological forces have contributed to this, including high HIV prevalence; failing TB control strategies; crowded, poorly ventilated indoor environments-including the complex web of political and economic interests which produce them; the development of racial capitalism; and mining and migration. In the following study, we measure CO2 levels in public transport to inves…
The global response to HIV in men who have sex with men
Forced removals embodied as tuberculosis
South Africa has one of the worst tuberculosis burdens in the world. Several ecological forces have contributed to this, including high HIV prevalence; failing TB control strategies; crowded, poorly ventilated indoor environments-including the complex web of political and economic interests which produce them; the development of racial capitalism; and mining and migration. In the following study, we measure CO2 levels in public transport to inves…
The symbolic violence of 'outbreak
Indirect rule redux
This article explores the relationship between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the political economy of diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone. The authors argue that foreign companies have recycled colonial strategies of indirect rule to facilitate the illicit flow of resources out of Sierra Leone. Drawing on field research conducted during the outbreak and in its aftermath, they show how this 'indirect rule redux' undermines democratic …
On the coloniality of global public health
The continued inordinate demise from communicable pathogens in the global South is not the result of an intractable problem thwarting our best efforts to prevent and cure disease; we have the means. Rather, as an accomplice to contemporary imperialism, public health manages (as a profession) and maintains (as an academic discipline) global health inequity. It does this through 'bourgeois empiricist' models of disease causation, which serve protec…
Pandemicity, Covid-19 and the limits of public health ‘science’
box > “No man is an island, > > entire of itself; > > each is a piece of the continent, > > a part of the main. > > If a clod be washed away by the sea, > > Europe is the less, > > as well as if a promontory were, > > as well as if a manor of thy friend’s > > or of thine own were. > > Each man’s death diminishes me, > > for I am involved in mankind. > > And therefore never send to know > > for whom the bell tolls; > > it tolls for thee.” John Don…
Epidemic Illusions
A physician-anthropologist explores how public health practices—from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment—help perpetuate global inequities. In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices—from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference—play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities. Drawing on postcolonial t…
Global vaccine equity demands reparative justice — not charity
By late April, more than 80% of the world's COVID-19 vaccines had gone to people in wealthy countries, with just 0.3% to people in low-income countries.1 This reprehensible imbalance is no accident. High-income countries have used neocolonial negotiating power, global policy leverage and capital to procure enough doses to cover 245% of their citizens while leaving few doses for poorer countries.2 As a result, lower-income countries may not be abl…
Sars-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in Sierra Leone, March 2021
INTRODUCTION: As of 26 March 2021, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had reported 4 159 055 cases of COVID-19 and 111 357 deaths among the 55 African Union member states; however, no country has published a nationally representative serosurvey as of October 2021. Such data are vital for understanding the pandemic's progression on the continent, evaluating containment measures, and policy planning. METHODS: We conducted a cross…
Reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. and their potential impact on Sars-CoV-2 transmission
Representations of an Ebola ‘outbreak’ through Story Technologies
Background Attempts to understand biosocial phenomena using scientific methods are often presented as value-neutral and objective; however, when used to reduce the complexity of open systems such as epidemics, these forms of inquiry necessarily entail normative considerations and are therefore fashioned by political worldviews (ideologies). From the standpoint of poststructural theory, the character of these representations is at most limited and…
Post-Omicron Sars-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in Sierra Leone
Based on a serosurvey conducted in March 2021, Barrie and colleagues published the first nationally representative SARS-CoV-2 serosurvey in Africa, estimating a SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence of 2.6% in Sierra Leone, 43 times higher than the reported number of cases at that time. Over the following two years, increasingly transmissible variants—specifically Delta and Omicron—proliferated across the globe, and their impact in Africa is poorly understoo…
A plan for black American reparations
The frequent criticism of a programme of reparations for Black Americans is that, however justified, no feasible blueprint exists for its implementation. We provide a detailed outline of a viable plan for reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the USA. Central to the plan are monetary payments calculated to eliminate the racial wealth gap, the foremost economic indicator of the cumulative, intergenerational effects of W…
Reparations for Caribbean slavery and the potential impact on human well-being
The reparations movement has emerged as a critical global force addressing the historical injustices of slavery, colonialism and underdevelopment. Grounded in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the movement has gained momentum through regional bodies like the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission (CRC). This article examines the intersection of colonialism, enslavement and contempora…
Climate reparations for threats to health
Climate change is already leading to loss of health for some people and this is expected to intensify as climate change increases. Moreover, ill health from climate change is experienced unevenly: overall, those who have been least responsible for causing the problem are often those most vulnerable to these losses due to the intersection of climate-related health threats with structural inequality. In this context, there have been multiple argume…
Reparations and distributive justice in global health
box Reparations are a global health imperative
Structural adjustment
Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank implemented neoliberal structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) across most countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. SAPs imposed austerity, privatisation and economic deregulation and have been associated with severe negative impacts on human welfare, including (a) declining real wages and working-class consumption in some regions, (b) increased rates o…
Overlooked toll of climate change on migrant children in the Americas
Building reparative futures demands a reckoning with the crisis form of global health
Recent cuts to global health funding and US withdrawal from the World Health Organization have generated claims that global health has entered a new crisis. This essay argues that such accounts misread the present moment. The better view is that global health operates through a ‘crisis form’, a modality of governance in which structural inequality is treated as ordinary, acute disruptions (Big Events) are framed as emergencies, and responses to B…
Long-term psychosocial sequelae of Ebola virus disease among survivors compared with contacts following the 2013–2016 epidemic in Liberia
Long-term psychosocial sequelae of Ebola virus disease (EVD) survivors are poorly understood. We conducted a cross-sectional study of a cohort of EVD survivors and their uninfected contacts in Liberia. Beginning in November 2019, we consecutively sampled eligible participants until the end of the parent study follow up. Enrolled participants completed a questionnaire administered by trained study staff. Outcome measurements were symptoms of depre…
Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research (10 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Public health (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Geography (5 works) · Global Health and Surgery (5 works) · Colonialism (4 works)