Health Beyond the Blog: “Mind the Gap”

“Mind the Gap” is an clinical handbook created by Zimbabwean medical student Malone Mukwende and faculty at St. George’s, University of London. It is an online resource of signs and symptoms of disease in black and brown skin whose main aim was to highlight the lack of diversity in medical literature and education. This lack of diversity which Mukwende noticed in his medical training creates a systematic gap in the care white patients receive and the care black and brown patients receive, worsening health disparities for black and brown communities. The handbook features epidermal signs and symptoms of countless disorders such as conjunctival pallor, central cyanosis, and erythema as well as hand clubbing and signs of HPV. This ongoing project created in May 2019 has been featured in House of Lords, British Medical Journal, Sky News, ITV News, Washington Post, CBC (Canada), and has also been distributed to medical schools across the world in hopes of closing the gap in the types of care different races receive.