Is Race Correction in Medicine Hurting Your Patients?
Doctors and providers use medical algorithms and equations when assessing a patient’s risk of illness or disease and recommending treatment. However, many of these programs use race as part of the analytics process. In fact, they may alter their recommendations or findings once the patient’s race is added into the system, a trend known as race correction.
But critics say these “corrections” tend to be misleading – if not dangerous – to patients of color.
What Is Race Correction?
Race correction is defined as the use of a patient’s race in a scientific equation that then influences how they are treated. That means some diagnostic algorithms and risk predictor tools will essentially adjust or “correct” their results based on the person’s race.
Can a formula be racist? She says one put her health at risk 08:03
The argument over race correction has raised questions about the scientific data doctors rely on to treat people of color. It s attracted the attention of Congress and led to a big lawsuit against the NFL.
What happens next could affect how millions of Americans are treated.
Medicine has never been immune to racism
Carolyn Roberts, a historian of medicine and science at Yale University, says slavery and the American medical system were in a codependent relationship for much of the 19th century and well into the 20th.
AAKP, ASN call on Congress for additional kidney research funding
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The American Association of Kidney Patients, American Society of Nephrology and kidney patients collaborated to pressure Congress into funding two major kidney research projects, according to a press release.
Chudi Adi
Chudi Adi, M.D., CEO/Founder of CADIS LLC, has received $20,000 in Round 2 of the KidneyX COVID-19 Kidney Care Challenge. The challenge is a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the American Society of Nephrology. From December to January, health care providers, dialysis centers, nonprofit health systems and other entrants submitted solutions that could reduce the transmission of coronavirus among people with kidney disease and/or reduce the risk of kidney damage among people who contract the virus. CADIS received the award for its mixed reality smart glasses supporting kidney disease management through telehealth and telemonitoring.
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IMAGE: A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that even mild cases of COVID-19 increase the risk of death in the six months following diagnosis. view more
Credit: Sara Moser
As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, it has become clear that many survivors even those who had mild cases continue to manage a variety of health problems long after the initial infection should have resolved. In what is believed to be the largest comprehensive study of long COVID-19 to date, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that COVID-19 survivors including those not sick enough to be hospitalized have an increased risk of death in the six months following diagnosis with the virus.