The National Academies “Ending Unequal Treatment: Strategies to Achieve Equitable Health Care and Optimal Health for All” is the 2024 follow-up to its 2003 seminal predecessor “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial Bias and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.” A noticeable difference between them is reflected in their titles; whereas the 2003 version made us aware of the systemic causes of racial disparities in health outcomes, the latest edition has moved beyond naming the problem to naming solutions.

In his recent JAMA article, Donald Berwick eloquently describes what he termed the “moral determinants of health,” by which he meant a strong sense of social solidarity in which people in the United States would “depend on each other for securing the basic circumstances of healthy lives,” reflecting a “moral law within.” Berwick’s work should serve as a call to action for bioethicists and clinical ethicists to consider what they can do to be forces of broad moral change in their institutions.