JAMA editor in chief steps down over controversial structural racism podcast

Howard Bauchner, the editor in chief of JAMA, will step down on 30 June in the fallout from a podcast and Twitter post about structural racism in US medicine.

The American Medical Association’s search committee for a new editor in chief will be chaired by a prominent African-American physician, Otis Brawley. He is Bloomberg distinguished professor of oncology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University and served as chief medical and scientific officer and executive vice president of the American Cancer Society. Previously he twice chaired a search committee for editor in chief of the journal Cancer.

The furore began with a JAMA podcast on 23 February that included a …