Picture This – How images distort global health

Send us a text

Can a picture lie? They can and do – especially when they are used out of context. And photographs and other imagery are regularly abused when it comes to illustrating global health. Available images illustrating disease outbreaks, refugee needs, and even benign public health campaigns routinely show Black and Brown people far more often than they do light-skinned residents of wealthy Western nations. Misery is almost always associated with color.

Dr. Esmita Charani of the University of Liverpool and of the Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at the University of Cape Town, tired of seeing this, did something about it. She and colleagues got the hard data about how public health imagery over-represents the global South. Her work got some attention and sparked some action. The Lancet is now changing the way it uses those images.

In this episode of One World, One Health, host Maggie Fox chats with Esmita about how this imbalance happened in the first place, how it’s harmful, and what can be done about it.