National Minority Health Month - "What About the Bias?"

April is National Minority Health Month, and Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy (Pulse CPSEA) applauds the federal Department of Health and Human Services 2019 drive to get people in minority communities more physically fit.

According to Pulse’s president Ilene Corina, however, something’s missing. “This initiative promotes exercise and healthy outdoor activity for people belonging to minorities. But once again, I can’t seem to find anything in there about patient safety, which is an even greater issue for minorities than it is for majority communities.”

To help address such inequalities, Pulse CPSEA has a whole program called The Healthcare Equality Project.

Research shows that (often unconscious) racial, gender or other kinds of bias may reduce the quality of healthcare delivered to minorities, and this goes beyond commonly assumed causes such as poverty or lack of community resources. How do we know?

• The death rate among pregnant African American women is higher than that for white women regardless of education level.
• The breast cancer death rate is 40% higher for African American women.
• Overall, doctors spend less time with African American patients.
• African American people are given less pain medication.
• There is extensive evidence and research that finds unconscious biases can lead to differential treatment of patients by race, gender, weight, age, language, income and insurance status.
• Racial health disparities are associated with substantial annual economic losses nationally, including an estimated $35 billion in excess health care expenditures, $10 billion in illness-related lost productivity, and nearly $200 billion in premature deaths.
• New York City hospitals that mainly serve African-American expectant mothers have severe complication rates two-and-a-half times higher than those that mainly serve white mothers, even after you factor in patient complexities.
• In New York City, African-American women are 12 times more likely to die before, during and after childbirth than white women — a gap almost four times wider than the country as a whole.
• Even subtle cues – like body language – can differ in patient-doctor interactions, depending on a doctor’s biases and whether a patient is white or black.

“So,” Corina wants to know, “while our tax dollars are at work promoting the idea that minorities need to be more physically fit, who is addressing the fact that there are still serious problems with racial and other kinds of bias in this country? Healthcare inequity is a serious patient safety issue, and much more funding needs to be directed to eradicating it. This is urgent!”

To learn more about what you can do to guard yourself and your family from medical error, please visit www.pulsecenterforpatientsafety.org.

All statistics can be found at www.oneisanumber.org

Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy (Pulse CPSEA) is a nonprofit 501 (c) 3 community-based organization dedicated to raising awareness about patient safety through advocacy, education and support.