On December 23, a jury declared the Seattle Children’s Hospital guilty of creating a race-based hostile work environment against the former Black medical director of the hospital’s Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, Benjamin Danielson. The conclusion of the lawsuit awarded Danielson $21 million in damages.
As a result of the racial discrimination case’s verdict, a trial that brought to light the effects of systemic racism in the white-dominated medical field and an individual’s hospital management’s responsibility to mitigate harmful inequity was finally concluded.
Danielson served as director of the Seattle Children’s Hospital clinic for well over two decades. In this position, he upheld the clinic’s original mission, begun over 50 years ago: to help increase healthcare access for Black people and to bring attention to their racially divided treatment and health outcomes. The Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic primarily focused on serving families of color and low-income individuals.
Despite the original mission of the clinic, Danielson filed a lawsuit and sued the Seattle Children’s Hospital system and resigned in November of 2020 after accusing the children’s hospital of perpetuating institutionalized racism against its patients and Black employees. He claimed that the hospital management allowed race-based disparities to grow and retaliated against employees who drew attention to the issues. The lawsuit caused an independent investigation to be launched.