It’s Black History Month, and we’re so excited to bring you this interview with Dr. Julius Wilder for our first installment in the Coalition’s HepEquity Blog.

Dr. Wilder is a hepatologist, gastroenterologist and assistant professor at Duke University. He chairs the DOM Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-racism Committee, and is co-director of the Duke CTSE Community Engaged Research Initiative.

As the featured speaker for Duke’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Grand Rounds, Dr. Wilder presented a lecture titled “Hepatitis C as a Paradigm for Health Equity and Social Justice.” The lecture brought together themes of historical discrimination, structural racism, medical bias, and inequities in health care access as they apply to hepatitis C in the United States. (You can watch the lecture in its entirety here.)

In this video interview, CGHE’s communications manager, Monica Fambrough, talks to Dr. Wilder about his inspiration for the lecture, as well as his insights on how inequity impacts hepatitis C in the US, including:

• The legacy of racism and its impact on chronic hepatitis C
• How inequity regarding access to testing and treatment reveals persistent problems in the US healthcare system
• The ways equity impacts mortality with regard to hepatitis C
• Changes in the burden of hepatitis C across and within communities
• How stigma compounds equity problems in hepatitis treatment, and the role of harm reduction
• Policy recommendations to increase equity for hepatitis C testing and care