WASHINGTON — Most of the medical community has acknowledged that racism is baked into many of its clinical tools: pulse oximeters and kidney function calculators are prime examples. But as presentations at a conference Tuesday showed, physicians remain divided on when to remove race from calculators and algorithms — and crucially, what characteristics should replace it.
“Many say that we should expunge race out of everything,” said Neil Powe, chief of medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, at one session. “That would be great. But what is the replacement, and does the replacement do more harm than good?”
The conference, hosted on Tuesday by the Doris Duke Foundation and others, focused on how inclusion of race in the clinic impacts health outcomes, and how to minimize the use of biased algorithms. The Doris Duke Foundation also announced over $10 million in grants on Tuesday, divvied up between five medical organizations to support more consistent approaches to race in clinical research.
Exciting news! STAT has moved its comment section to our subscriber-only app, STAT+ Connect. Subscribe to STAT+ today to join the conversation or join us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads. Let's stay connected!
To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page.