Drs. Ijeoma Nnodim Opara, M.D., and Latonya Riddle-Jones, the co-founders of The Wayne State University School of Medicine’s End Race-Based Medicine Taskforce, will be coming to campus to give a presentation on ending race based medicine. The task force is working “to dispel and extinguish the misguided belief that individual races are biologically distinct groups determined by genes, and terminate medical practices and research that adhere to that concept” (WSU, 2024).
Despite knowing that racial differences in genetics only exist in 0.001% of the human genome (Smedley, 2018), the impacts of race-based medicine are still prolific.
Pain Management
Even when other factors are accounted for, Hispanic and Black ER patients are 50% and 66% less likely, respectively, to receive pain medication from the ER for fractured bones than white patients (Andersen, 2009).
Childbirth
African American mothers are 4 times more likely to die during childbirth than white mothers (Smedley, 2018). Even though the education of a mother is a known protective factor, African American and Native American mothers who are college-educated are more likely to lose an infant than white mothers with no high school diploma (Smedley, 2018).
Fatality
Black patients are 30% and 50% more likely to die prematurely from heart disease and heat stroke than their white counterparts (National Academy of Science, 2017).
Quality of Care
A study examining quality of care found that Latinos received poorer quality of care on 77% of measures, African Americans on 73%, American Indians on 41%, and Asian Americans on 32% (Smedley, 2018).
Don’t forget to join the Structural Racism Programming Committee and ABPsi for “Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover: Ending Race-Based Medicine in Health Care” on April 2 at 12:30 PM to learn more. Please RSVP if you plan to attend.
