“These are contemporary issues, with disturbing articles coming out every year.” Troubled watersįor centuries, race-based medicine in the United States has aimed to identify biological differences between racial groups that could then be used to tailor health care to members of those groups. “These are not remote, historical issues around race-based treatment recommendations,” says Reid. Yet a 2016 survey in PNAS of white medical students and residents found that half of the respondents still believe and act on them. Digging deeper reveals that these notions, as old as transatlantic slavery, have no evidence behind them. Black skin is thicker than white skin, they’ve learned. Black bodies have fewer nerve endings than white bodies, they’ve been told. Many clinicians have heard or been formally taught that Black people don’t feel pain as acutely as white people because they have different biology. The disparity in pain management, however, is also driven by biases that are more insidious because they appear to be based in science. When treating pain from broken bones to appendicitis, clinicians-often white clinicians-give darker-skinned patients, including children, lower doses of analgesics than they do white patients, less potent medicines, or nothing at all.Īssuming that a Black or Latino man in pain is a drug user represents race-based discrimination that might be rectified through anti-bias training. Studies confirm what Reid and countless other people of color in the United States have known for decades: Black and brown patients are systematically undertreated for pain. Harvard COVID-19 Information: Keep Harvard Healthy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |