By: Leah Park

While scrolling through TikTok, I came across a post in which a black mother accused her doctors of malpractice because of her race. Surely, I thought, in today’s day and age, such accusations were unfounded; doctors are human and are susceptible to making honest mistakes. But as I started to research her claim that African-Americans get subpar medical treatment, I realized that doctors are indeed human, susceptible to racial prejudice.

Historically, Black Americans have been mistreated by US healthcare professionals. One of the darkest times in medical history occurred from 1932 to 1972 when America conducted the infamous Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. The study recruited black patients and conducted experiments on them without their consent—a clear violation of human health rights and the oath that doctors swore to uphold to save lives.

In modern times, Black Americans are still overlooked when being treated as a result of racial bias and implicit racism. A study from the National Academy of Science revealed that in 400 hospitals around the US, black patients actually received worse quality treatments than white patients in the same hospitals. In addition, the American Bar Association held numerous studies to determine whether or not these health professionals held racist views subconsciously with an IAT. IATs, or Implicit Association Tests, are used to find the subconscious negative attitudes towards a certain race that a person might have. In one of the studies, doctors with anti-black implicit biases were less likely to administer a type of treatment for coronary heart disease for Black patients than white patients. By using the IAT Test, another study found that physicians with pro-white biases were more likely to prescribe pain medications to white patients than to black patients. Going further into the idea of racial bias in pain assessment, a study from Journal of the National Medical Association found that physicians were twice as likely to underestimate the pain of Black patients than of white patients. This underestimation of pain and inferior treatment have caused a disconnect between physicians and Black patients, which in turn has evolved into distrust in the system. According to Kennedy et. al from the Journal of Cultural Diversity, Black Americans were more likely to have a lack of trust in the US healthcare system as a result of previous experiences in which Black Americans were used as “guinea pigs”. Reflecting back on countless past experiences such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Studies as well as the biased pain assessment from physicians, it’s obvious why so many Black Americans don’t trust the system anymore.

This distrust has also led to skepticism about vaccines, which was especially devastating during the COVID-19 pandemic. When UCLA psychologists interviewed 300 African Americans in 2020, “Black respondents expressed less trust in medical professionals and reported significantly less positive experiences with the health care system than their white counterparts. They were also less likely to report an intention to get vaccinated” (Ober). This UCLA study shows the lasting impact that historical precedents of mistreatment of African Americans in the US has had on the current health disparities between Black and White Americans.

While some may argue that the disparity in healthcare is a result of the lack of high quality hospitals in minority dense locations rather than systemic and implicit racism, this isn’t the case. It was revealed that minorities with the same geographic access to high quality hospitals were still receiving inadequate healthcare in comparison to their non-minority counterparts.

To begin, high quality hospitals in the same geographic area had differing admittance rates based on a person’s race. The Urban Institute found that “Black patients were 7.9 percentage points more likely than White patients to be admitted into hospitals considered low-quality across all seven surgery-related patient safety measures and 4.9 percentage points less likely than White patients to be admitted into hospitals achieving high patient safety on all seven surgery-related measures” (Gangopadhyaya).

In the cases where Black and White patients were admitted in the SAME high quality hospitals, Black patients were still given inferior treatments. According to the LA Times, Black patients were found to be more likely to suffer illnesses or injuries related to medical procedures, even when the patients were in the same age and gender group. Finally, a study from the American Public Health Association concluded that Black patients were also at higher risk of patient safety incidents.

All of this data has shown me the truth that regardless of geographic location and lack of access to hospitals, when minority populations were in the same vicinity/high quality hospitals, they were still receiving inferior treatment due to the implicit racism present in the US healthcare system.

Overall, the pressing issue of racial disparities in healthcare is still very prominent today and we as a society must restore trust of Black Americans in the healthcare system so that they too, can have an equal opportunity to receive high quality healthcare.

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Works Cited

• AK;, Kennedy BR;Mathis CC;Woods. “African Americans and Their Distrust of the Health Care System: Healthcare for Diverse Populations.” Journal of Cultural Diversity, U.S. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19175244/.
• “Black Patients Are More Likely than White Patients to Be in Hospitals with Worse Patient Safety Conditions.” RWJF, www.rwjf.org/en/insights/our-research/2021/03/black-patients-are-more-likely-than-white-patients-to-be-in-hospitals-with-worse-patient-safety-conditions.html.
• Bridges, Khiara M. “Implicit Bias and Racial Disparities in Health Care.” American Bar Association, www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/racial-disparities-in-health-care/.
• July 30, 2021Vol.47 No.30, et al. “Racial Minority Patients Underrepresented in 80% of Hospitals, U.S. News ‘Equity Measures’ Find.” The Cancer Letter, 2 Aug. 2021, cancerletter.com/the-cancer-letter/20210730_1/.
• Metersky ML;Hunt DR;Kliman R;Wang Y;Curry M;Verzier N;Lyder CH;Moy E; “Racial Disparities in the Frequency of Patient Safety Events: Results from the National Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System.” Medical Care, U.S. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21494115/.
• Ober, Holly. “Black Americans’ COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Stems More from Today’s Inequities than Historical Ones.” UCLA, UCLA, 27 Oct. 2022, newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/causes-of-covid-vaccine-hesitancy-among-black-americans.
• “Public Health Service Study of Untreated Syphilis at Tuskegee and Macon County, al – Cdc – OS.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9 Jan. 2023, www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/index.html#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Public%20Health%20Service%20(USPHS)%20Untreated%20Syphilis%20Study%20at,after%20it%20was%20widely%20available.
• “Same Hospitals but Worse Outcomes for Black Patients than White Ones.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2021, www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-07-20/black-patients-injuries-illness-surgery-same-hospitals.
• Staton, Lisa J, et al. “When Race Matters: Disagreement in Pain Perception between Patients and Their Physicians in Primary Care.” Journal of the National Medical Association, U.S. National Library of Medicine, May 2007, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2576060/.