Match Maker

The benefits of visiting a dermatologist who looks like you go more than skin deep.

- CELIA SHATZMAN

Materia Johnson felt as if her skin was on fire. It started one day with red lesions on her chest. Her skin was itchy and irritated and the rash was spreading. "It felt like I was being bitten by ants," she recalls. "It was terrible." She saw her GP, who referred her to a dermatologist. That doctor prescribed medication, but it didn't ease the itching or spread. She saw another dermatologist who wasn't able to help either, despite prescribing topical medication. After four months of living in pain, she was diagnosed with a form of eczema that is often harder to spot on people of colour and finally got proper treatment from Dr Corey Hartman. (Materia actually knew Dr Hartman socially and, desperate for a solution, decided to see if he might have an answer.) She hasn't had a breakout since.

STARTING AT THE SOURCE

What made Materia's condition so tough to identify? For one, only 10 percent of images in dermatology textbooks show diseases on dark skin, leading to under-diagnosis.

What's more, doctors of colour are woefully underrepresented in the field of dermatology, so the majority of medical students are white and see skin conditions in textbooks on predominantly white patients. That's what spurred London-based medical student Malone Mukwende to create Mind the Gap, a handbook of images and descriptions of signs and symptoms in Black and Brown skin. That's also why other resources such as the Black Derm Directory (a searchable global directory of Black dermatologists) and the University of Nottingham's Skin of Colour Resource, which links to relevant research and info, now exist.