Ending Race Correction
IN HEALTH CARE SPEAKER SERIES
What is “Race Correction”?
Health care providers often use tests to assess a patient’s health. In some cases, health care providers calculate test results differently for Black people 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 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” groups than within them.
What is “Race”?
“Race correction” has no scientific basis because “race” is not biological. It is a social and political construct.
Li Ka Shing, Clinical and Population Research Rounds
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.
For any questions related to this topic, please contact LKSKIResearch@unityhealth.to