Racist anti-Asian incidents and rhetoric in the USA have been on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic, by some accounts increasing as much as 150%. The horrific mass shooting on March 15, 2021, in which six of eight people killed in three spas in Atlanta, Georgia, were Asian women, has prompted urgent conversations about prejudice against Asian Americans. Organizations including the American Medical Association were swift to underscore that racism, in addition to gun violence, is a public health crisis. The American Psychiatric Association warned that the shooting could compound the trauma and fear already experienced in Asian American communities. 2020 was a year of reckoning around race in the USA and national introspection about the maltreatment of people of color; 2021 is a year to consider how racism and discrimination, alongside other social determinants, shape the broader context of health. Read more here