Skin of Color

A majority of people in the world from diverse backgrounds have skin of color. Skin of color is defined in relation to less-pigmented skin. Resources for teaching, learning, research, and clinical practice in all areas of healthcare and their intersection with skin of color are potential topics for inclusion in this guide. Journals (including special issues); tips on scholarly literature searching; skin of color images; reference texts (both ebooks and print); social media accounts and hashtags; professional associations, societies, and conferences; and funding resources are among the topics covered.

Do you have suggestions for additional content? Please contact: LaTeesa James, lateesaj@umich.edu

For additional assistance, a Taubman Health Sciences Library informationist can:

• Help with your literature search
• Give you tips for finding data or survey instruments
• Teach you advanced techniques for database searching
• Orient you to the library resources available through U-M
• Teach you about citation management tools (EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero) that can save you time in creating citations & bibliographies for research papers

Here are a few relevant readings that provide an introduction to the inequity that this guide seeks to address. 
 

• Rutgers Finds, Then Fixes, Disproportionately White Dermatology Images. Medpage Today, May 2, 2025.
• Decolonising Dermatology: Why Black and Brown Skin Need Better Treatment. The Guardian, 2020.  
• Dermatology Has a Problem with Skin Color. The New York Times, 2020. NYTimes.com version behind a paywall; U-M full-text access link here. 
• Gaps in Medical Education Curricula on Skin of Color in Medical School, Residency, and Beyond. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2022. 
• Medical Students' Ability to Diagnose Common Dermatologic Conditions in Skin of Color. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2020. 
• Representation of Dark Skin Images of Common Dermatologic Conditions in Educational Resources: A Cross-Sectional Analysis. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2021. 
• Representations of Race and Skin Tone in Medical Textbook Imagery. Social Science & Medicine, 2018. 
• Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Dermatology: A Call to Action. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2016. 
• Ethnic Skin Centers in the United States: Where Are We in 2020? Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2020.
• How Dermatology is Failing Melanoma Patients with Skin of Color. Cancer Cytopathology, 2020. 
• Under-Representation of Skin of Colour in Dermatology Images: Not Just an Educational Issue. British Journal of Dermatology, 2019. 
• Illustrating Change: Diversity in Medical Textbooks. Think Global Health, 2024.
• Dermatology. In: Physician Workforce Diversity, 2024.

VisualDx is a point-of-care diagnostic system, providing high-quality images to help identify and classify visible patient symptoms. Access is provided via the University of Michigan Library and requires a level-1 login. A mobile app version is available for those who sign up for a personal account within the database. 

VisualDx provides a Skin of Color-specific Differential Builder. 

If you start building a differential from the 'Dermatology Skin of Color' builder, the images shown to you will automatically be conditions presenting on skin of color.

VisualDx provides a Skin of Color filter when image searching. 

If you're not using the differential diagnosis tool, you can search for a condition as normal in the main search box. On that condition's page, click the 'Skin of Color' button above the images on the right-hand side of the page, and the images will immediately update to show skin of color results.

VisualDx also provides a filter for different skin tones when image searching. 

If you would like to limit your image results further by a particular skin tone, click on 'View All Images' for the condition of your choice. You will see a button to 'Filter Images.' Among other options, you will be able to select skin pigmentation types. 

Select the skin pigmentation type(s) desired, and your image results page will automatically update.

If you have any questions about using VisualDx, reach out to one of the library contacts!

VisualDx also powers Project IMPACT, which is "a community dedicated to reducing healthcare bias in skin of color." 

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