Department of Medicine Weekly Roundup - November 9th - Ending the Practice of “Race Correction” in Health Care speaker series, as part of the Li Ka Shing, Clinical and Population Research Rounds, 2023
Title: When the literature betrays the patient: Exploring systematic reviews through the lens of “race correction”
Presented by Dr. Patricia O’Campo, Executive Director of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at Unity Health Toronto, in partnership with the Canada-US Coalition to End Race Correction in Health Care and Knowledge Translation at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions.
Date and Time (virtual event): Nov 29, 2023 from 12 pm – 1:30 pm EST
Registration: https://when-the-literature-betrays-the-patient.eventbrite.ca
About this talk: This talk will explore the question of – What does the reality of race correction mean for the integrity of systematic reviews that:
- Concern or include data based on a diagnostic tool that is race corrected;
- Do not explicitly take race correction into account.
What is “race correction”? Health care providers often use tests to assess a patient’s health. In many cases, health care providers calculate test results differently for Black patients than they do for everyone else. Overall, “race correction” means that Black people are diagnosed late, or never diagnosed at all, for serious conditions from heart, kidney and lung diseases to cognitive impairment. It also means that Black people are systematically excluded from timely access to life-saving treatments like organ transplants and other surgeries. “Race correction” has no scientific basis because “race” is not biological. It is a social construct that is applied differently in different times and in different places. In fact, scientists have shown us that people have more in common genetically across “racial”.