Can race/ethnicity be used to tailor medical history-taking?
As with using an individual’s race/ethnicity to tailor medical history-taking, this information is used to inform but not to dictate a specific approach.
How can we better understand racial/ethnic variations in health?
To better understand the basis for observed racial/ethnic variations in health, each supports the collection of additional data that capture the specific factors that contribute to group differences (58–60, 64, 66, 67, 127, 128).
Are there racial and ethnic disparities in health care services?
The report reviews the hundreds of research studies now available and concludes that there are remarkably consistent racial and ethnic disparities across a range of illnesses and health care services that cannot be attributed to economic status or access to care.
Should race and ethnicity be omitted from public health data?
Omitting race and ethnicity in public health data would erode the power of predictive models in public health. Also, omission of race/ethnicity information may introduce bias in estimations of the predictive power of other variables due to uncontrolled confounding.
How does race and ethnicity affect health care in the US?
NAM found that “racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health care than white people—even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable.” By “lower-quality health care,” NAM meant the concrete, inferior care that physicians give their black patients.
How does race and gender affect health care?
African American men had fewer physician contacts; minority and non-Hispanic White women used fewer hospital or outpatient surgery services; minority men used less outpatient surgery; and Hispanic women were less likely to use nursing home care, compared with non-Hispanic White men, controlling for predisposing factors ...
What is race and ethnicity in healthcare?
The Institute of Medicine defines disparities as “racial or ethnic differences in the quality of health care that are not due to access-related factors or clinical needs, preferences, and appropriateness of intervention.” Racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive poorer quality care compared with nonminorities, even ...
Do race and ethnicity have an impact on the health of individuals?
In spite of significant advances in the diagnosis and treatment of most chronic diseases, there is evidence that racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower quality of care than nonminorities and that, patients of minority ethnicity experience greater morbidity and mortality from various chronic diseases than ...
What is the difference between race and ethnicity?
Ethnicity is similar in concept to race. But while races have often been distinguished on the basis of physical characteristics, especially skin color, ethnic distinctions generally focus on such cultural characteristics as language, history, religion, and customs (Montague, 1942).
Why is race important in medicine?
Race continues to permeate medical teaching and clinical decision making and treatment in multiple ways, including: (1) through providers' attitudes and implicit biases, (2) disease stereotyping and nomenclature, and (3) clinical algorithms and treatment guidelines.
What are examples of race and ethnicity?
The Revisions to OMB Directive 15 defines each racial and ethnic category as follows:American Indian or Alaska Native. ... Asian. ... Black or African American. ... Hispanic or Latino. ... Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. ... White.
Why is it important to examine racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare?
Compared with whites, members of racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive preventive health services and often receive lower-quality care. They also have worse health outcomes for certain conditions.
What are the main causes of racial and ethnic health disparities?
The sources of racial and ethnic health care disparities include differences in geography, lack of access to adequate health coverage, communication difficulties between patient and provider, cultural barriers, provider stereotyping, and lack of access to providers.
How does race and ethnicity affect society?
Racial and ethnic prejudices affect the distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity, and create enduring social stratifications. Racial pride can foment racial prejudice, as in the case of white supremacists.
How does ethnicity affect nursing?
Asian and Black nurses appear to be linked to higher reported RACE scores. Specifically, nurses who identified as Asian reported RACE scores 1.41 points higher than White nurses (p < . 001), and those who identified as Black or African American reported RACE scores 0.55 points higher than White nurses (p < . 05).
Why does race affect health?
The data show that racial and ethnic minority groups, throughout the United States, experience higher rates of illness and death across a wide range of health conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, and heart disease, when compared to their White counterparts.
What are the gender differences in healthcare?
Typical gender differences in health care include differences in the use of preventive measures, the prescription of drugs, health insurance reimbursement and referral for or acceptance of particular surgical therapies such as pacemaker implantation or heart transplantation .
What is the new concept of evidence-based sex and gender medicine?
The new concept of evidence-based sex and gender medicine—which includes the fundamental differences of biology and behaviour between women and men—should improve health care for both sexes. Men and women are alike in many ways. However, there are important biological and behavioural differences between the two genders.
What does gender medicine consider?
Gender medicine must consider the needs of both sexes
What are the differences between gender and sex?
These include reproductive function, concentrations of sexual hormones, the expression of genes on X and Y chromosomes and their effects and the higher percentage of body fat in women. By contrast, gender is associated with behaviour , lifestyle and life experience.
Why do women have more strokes than men?
Women also experience more strokes than men, yet this is mostly owing to greater incidence of stroke with increasing age. In addition, an increasing number of younger women are affected by stroke each year. Atrial fibrillation is a greater risk for stroke in women than in men [6,7].
Is gender sensitive medicine the same as gender sensitive medicine?
Complex interdependency of sex and gender in the human. As such, gender-sensitive medicine is not the same as considering the specific needs of women in health care—such as during pregnancy or during menopause–and might even be contradictory. Gender medicine must consider the needs of both sexes.
Do women get dialysis later than men?
Women obtain dialysis later than men , and undergo fewer kidney transplants, both from living and deceased donors [52,53].
Why do they ask about race and ethnicity?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau website, they ask about race and ethnicity because they’re collecting information about civil rights. 2 .
What is race in culture?
Some scholars argue that race is a cultural intervention that reflects specific attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on different populations in the wake of the Western European conquests of the 15th century.
What are the problems with categorizing?
Problems With Categorization. Race and ethnicity are used to categorize certain sections of the population. In basic terms, race describes physical traits, and ethnicity refers to cultural identification. Race may also be identified as something you inherit while ethnicity is something you learn. This article details the differences between race ...
What is the meaning of ethnicity?
Ethnicity. Ethnicity is a broader term than race. The term is used to categorize groups of people according to their cultural expression and identification. Commonalities such as racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin may be used to describe someone’s ethnicity.
What race are you if you are Hispanic?
The U.S. Census Bureau asks whether you’re of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish descent. They recognize that individuals who describe themselves as fitting into this category may be of any race. 4
What is race in the dictionary?
The dictionary by Merriam-Webster defines race as “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits.” 1
Why do we collect race data?
They also collect data about race because they’re ensuring that policies serve the needs of all racial groups. They want to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws and regulations as well.
When looking at the relationship between behavioral health and racial and ethnic minorities, we must consider barriers to access?
When looking at the relationship between behavioral health and racial and ethnic minorities, we must consider barriers to accessing treatment . In looking at service use data for adults with mental illness, patterns over the last two decades are relatively stable: White men and women access the greatest number of services, followed by Black or African Americans and Latinos or Hispanics, followed by Asians accessing the fewest services. [10]
What happens if we don't acknowledge differences in mental health?
If we do not acknowledge differences in how we identify, diagnose, and treat racial and ethnic minorities in our behavioral health system, we will continue to provide ineffective mental and substance use disorder treatment. In turn, we will fail to fully address the public health crisis that is at the heart of our racially disproportionate jail and prison populations.
Who Provides Mental Health Treatment?
There is a lack of diversity in the mental health workforce. According to SAMHSA’s Mental Health, United States, 2010 report, racial minorities account for only the following percentages of relevant professions:
What are the barriers to accessing mental health services?
Cultural barriers such as stigma among minority populations, language differences, cultural presentation of symptoms, and longstanding mistrust of the mental health system all contribute to the disparity in services accessed.
Why is the distribution of mental health services uneven?
One of the reasons for the uneven distribution of behavioral health service use is the very real barriers to care that prevent or dissuade people of racial or ethnic minorities from getting treatment. Cultural barriers such as stigma among minority populations, language differences, cultural presentation of symptoms, and longstanding mistrust of the mental health system all contribute to the disparity in services accessed. Those cultural factors are compounded by structural barriers that include lack of insurance, underinsurance, and a paucity of available services. [12]
Is schizophrenia a racial disorder?
For the past three decades, research has consistently shown that African Americans are over-diagnosed or misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and underdiagnosed with mood disorders. [3] Those findings were recently confirmed in a 2019 study by Rutgers University: “The results are consistent with findings from a large body of literature suggesting that racial differences in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the United States result in part from clinicians underemphasizing the relevance of mood symptoms among African Americans compared with other racial-ethnic groups.” [4]
Can mental health providers have equal representation?
We may never achieve equal ethnic and racial representation in our mental health workforce, but we can do more to improve cultural competency among existing behavioral health care providers. Lack of training around issues of culture and ethnicity can have unintended consequences: underdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, lack of communication between provider and patient, delays in appropriate treatment, lower rates of compliance, and poor treatment outcomes. [9]
Why are data collected on race and ethnicity?
Traditionally, data are collected on race and ethnicity to accomplish several overlapping purposes in public health
What are the new categories of race?
The new race categories are American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and White. Second, and most important, individuals are now allowed to identify themselves as belonging to more than one racial group. Third, the placement of the Hispanic origin question was changed so that it now precedes the race question in order to increase the number of Hispanics selecting a specified race category (69).
Why tabulate multiracial respondents?
Tabulating multiracial respondents in the Census provides an opportunity to raise the counts of rarer populations, but it also raises the question of whether this occurs at the expense of misstating disparities in the health of specific racial/ethnic groups. This might arise often from pragmatic choices by planners or federal and state officials to reclassify multiracial respondents back into single, larger race categories. There are a number of reasons why this choice might be made including increasing statistical power and facilitating easier reporting approaches. But, by and large, a prominent reason might be for the purpose of bridging the data to other datasets where a single, larger race classification has been used (70, 75).
Why is it important to know the race of an individual?
Knowledge of the race/ethnicity of an individual or of the racial/ethnic distribution of a population has the potential to allow for more effective tailoring of health services delivery. This may occur at all levels of health care intervention. The HHS Initiative on Eliminating Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health in the United States is an example of how racial/ethnic categorizations are being incorporated into public health objectives, program planning, and interventions on a national level (116).
Why is reclassification into single race categories important?
Reclassification into single-race categories may also for some racial groups create more meaningful classifications as compared to others. For example, some biracial individuals may strongly identify with one race over the other, depending upon their socialization or political consciousness about racial/ethnic identification (48, 49) or because of how they are treated in society based on their racial or ethnic status. Depending on which method is used for assigning their race, it may or may not coincide with the particular race most salient to the behavior of that individual.
How do cultural, social, and environmental factors contribute to the distribution of disease and risk factors for disease?
Cultural, social, and environmental influences also contribute to the considerable heterogeneity in the distribution of disease and risk factors for disease. These influences vary by racial/ethnic background. Because information on race/ethnicity is commonly available in health data, this information can then be used as a proxy for unmeasured social factors. The extent to which this strategy is effective varies substantially and is dependent, of course, on the strength of association between the proxy (e.g., race or ethnicity) and the unmeasured construct (10, 70). For example, cultural norms are known to influence individual levels of behavior, such as dietary practices, tobacco and alcohol use, or responses to stressful events (67, 94). Many of these behaviors are associated with both race or ethnicity and health outcomes.
What are the determinants of health?
Social factors, including income, education, insurance status, and having a regular source of health care, are also well-established determinants of health. These, too, differ among racial/ethnic groups (17, 76, 80, 88, 95, 125). But unlike race or ethnicity, these cultural, social, and environmental factors are mutable and potentially amenable to public health intervention. Among African Americans, for example, differences in delays in seeking emergency care for acute chest pain have been found to be related to socioeconomic status (32) in part, though not completely (101).
Does race matter in medicine?
In truth, race and ethnicity matter as much in medicine as in the rest of the society. For example, whites, African-Americans and Latinos share the same expectations of their physicians, a study in Health Services Research found, but “patients from different racial and ethnic groups report differing experiences…when using well-validated measurement tools.” Translation: the perception reflects reality.
Do blacks have a role in physicians?
“Blacks and Hispanics generally perceive their role relationships with physicians to be less equitable than do whites, ” concluded a Medical Care Research and Review article examining the influence of race and ethnicity on patient activation. If activation refers to an individual’s underlying willingness to take an active role in his or her health, “being a minority often increases the traditional role distinctions seen between physicians and patients when both are white.”