User:Dthagan/Race and health in the United States

Race-Based Diagnoses
Racial groups, especially minority groups, are frequently exposed to different types of barriers when in need of medical treatment. The World Health Organization identifies some of these barriers, including unequal access to health services, lack of cultural sensitivity, differing quality of services, timeliness of access to such services, and general discrimination in healthcare systems. Certain racial groups can receive different courses of treatment, diagnoses, and prescription medications than those that self-identify as other races. These differences can be commonly linked to correction factors in medical calculators, algorithms that are unable to account for variables rooted in social disparities, and drugs designed for specific racial populations. BiDil is a drug used to treat congestive heart failure in black people. The Food and Drug Administration initially rejected applications of the medication since their clinical trials did not demonstrate any efficacy for a general racial population within the United States, except for African Americans. BiDil’s manufacturer, NitroMed, then completed a clinical trial that solely enrolled African Americans. They found a decrease in mortality for this exclusive group and in 2005, the FDA approved the drug’s usage exclusively for black patients. It is currently still in use with the same stipulation.

BiDil has been considered to be a "race drug" by some in the medical community. Backlash stems from a debate on whether race can be a reliable factor in making diagnoses and prescriptions. Those that oppose its usage believe its prescription process to be unscientific. With respect to BiDil's racialization, Sheldon Krimsky wrote, “'self-identified race' is a subjective term, influenced by cultural factors, and not even grounded in the ancestral genomics."

Ziad Obermeyer M.D., et al. found that a specific algorithm, which determines what patients need further care, favors additional medical attention towards white people over black people. This analysis was based on data concerning average health costs that are incurred by these specific races. The same article puts forward the claim, "Bias occurs because the algorithm uses health costs as a proxy for health needs," as African Americans have been found to face disproportionate poverty levels in the United States and are forced to spend less on healthcare than white patients. This bias caused the algorithm to find that black patients are generally healthier than white patients and a conclusion was created by the algorithm that black patients do not need extra care in such instances.

Estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) is a scored measurement of a patient’s kidney function. Once measured, healthcare providers can utilize the test score to determine the quality of kidneys' filtering ability in a given patient. According to a study by Dr. Darshali Vyas, et al., the equation for eGFR reports a higher score for black patients by a factor of 1.210, which the study's authors doubt the validity of. The algorithm's developers backed the results, citing that black people have higher creatinine levels, which can be a lurking variable in eGFR calculations. Vyas makes a rebuttal to this idea, stating, "Explanations that have been given for this finding include the notion that black people release more creatinine into their blood at baseline, in part because they are reportedly more muscular." In reality, this generalization may not be the case and can be harmful to minorities that encounter such correction factors.

Similarly, the vaginal birth after Caesarean section (VBAC) medical calculator is used to estimate the probability that a patient will successfully complete a vaginal birth if they have already had a birth via Caesarean section. There are correction factors based on race that have been commonly used in this calculator; self-reported African American patients' results are multiplied by a factor of 0.671. The VBAC calculator is in the process of being altered by the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network, as of December 2021, to omit race and ethnicity in the interest of ignoring such "socially constructed variables" that may be inaccurate.