Racial Bias in Medicine Leads to Worse Care for Minorities - US News:
"Nor is it simply social determinants, like lower socioeconomic status, that disproportionately touch many minority populations, and which can also contribute to higher disease rates, shorter life spans and more limited access to health care and patient choice, that account for the disparities in care nonwhite patients receive, and result in poorer treatment and health. Even accounting for such differences, racial bias – in and of itself – whether in health care or experienced anywhere else in society, can have a negative drag on a person’s health, explains Tené T. Lewis, an associate professor of epidemiology at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. Lewis led a review published last year in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology that looked at research on self-reported experiences of discrimination, wherever it takes place, and health: “The overwhelming body of research on discrimination and health indicates that self-reported experiences of discrimination are an important risk factor for poor mental and physical health,” the researchers wrote.
“If you are African-American or Latino and you present to the emergency room with a broken leg or a kidney stone, for example, you’re less likely to be given analgesics at the recommended level,” Lewis says, regarding the administration of medicines that relieve pain. “It doesn’t matter what part of the country you’re in, it doesn’t matter what type of place you’d present to, that we’ve seen fairly consistently.” In addition, she says, there have been similar racial differences found in cardiac care and some studies showing delays in kidney transplantation rates.
In general, being regularly subjected to racial bias and discrimination, whether in health care, retail stores or restaurants, contributes to everything from high blood pressure to worse sleep, research finds. “We know that people who report more discrimination have higher rates of incident stroke and heart disease, we know that they have more asthma, we know that they have more of the bad type of fat that’s around your internal organs – visceral fat, more inflammation,” Lewis says. “So we conceptualize it as a form of psychological stress.”"
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