Medical photography is failing patients with darker skin

But Jenna Lester, a dermatologist at the University of California San Francisco, was growing frustrated with the poor quality images she'd receive of her dark-skinned patients. It wasn't just a cosmetic issue -- the bad photos meant darker-skinned people weren't getting the same quality of care. So in January, Lester co-authored a paper in the British Journal of Dermatology that gives a step-by-step guide to photographing skin of color accurately in clinical settings. Lester, who herself is Black, said, "I feel like these issues and my life is constantly me saying, 'Hey, what about us?' 'What about these patients?'" Medical photographs are vital to documenting disease in textbooks and journals and training medical students.