AI threatens to cement racial bias in clinical algorithms. Could it also chart a path forward?
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In a cavernous converted chapel at Brown University, physician and data scientist…
Category: health disparities
A race-free algorithm is merely the start for a safety net hospital confronting an onslaught of kidney disease
NEW YORK — One Brooklyn Health, a safety net hospital system that serves some of…
She was told she might have cancer: How medicine pathologizes Black patients’ normal test results
A busy medical student, Vanessa Apea wasn’t her usual energetic self. So she dragged herself…
Upending a longstanding paradigm, cardiologists embrace ZIP codes, not race, to predict heart risk
Not only is Joseph Wright a physician, he’s the chief health equity officer for the…
Inside the bruising battle to purge race from a kidney disease calculator
There it was on James Cannon’s lab report, two tiny words: African American. The words…
How race became ubiquitous in medical decision-making tools
It was created with the best intentions: a government policy asking researchers to collect racial…
A STAT Investigation: Embedded Bias
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Explore the clinical tools that use race to steer care
Every day, physicians use clinical algorithms to make decisions about the patients in their exam…
Doctors use problematic race-based algorithms to guide care every day. Why are they so hard to change?
Pediatrician Alexandra Epee-Bounya had had enough. In her 20 years caring for children in Boston,…
Glucose monitors, mpox vaccine inequity and effects of LGBTQ+ restrictions
STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial…
Opinion: Doing more cancer screening won’t reduce Black-white health disparities
For years, Black Americans have been more likely to die of cancer than white Americans….
Opinion: Aspirin after a broken bone: health equity in a $5 bottle
There are few things more exciting for researchers than to mount and complete a clinical…
Morning Rounds: Another Ebola outbreak?
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Scientists are starting to uncover how neighborhood can affect the biology of cancer
Where you live has a relationship to your odds of getting cancer and surviving cancer….
Opinion: When life mirrors research: What a fall on the ice taught me about being Black and in pain
As I hurried to an important meeting about my Ph.D. dissertation one day in 2015,…
Opinion: Cost-effectiveness of health interventions may be perpetuating health disparities. Here’s how to fix that
As an epidemiologist and physician, I’ve long been concerned about how health interventions for marginalized…
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Opinion: ACL tears in women: Too many injuries and too little research
Some of the world’s finest athletes were sidelined by a torn anterior cruciate ligament (the…
VA disputes claim that removing race from lung tests would greatly alter disability payments
Veterans Affairs department officials said Monday they have launched a study to determine how removing…
Bone marrow donors needn’t be perfect match, study says, paving way for more equitable access
As a hematologist-oncologist in Miami, Mikkael Sekeres always hopes his patients will find a perfect…
Opinion: Unsettling truths about maternal mortality in the U.S.
Grave warnings of a crisis in maternal deaths are being slightly eroded by articles suggesting…
Opinion: Listen: Why is eugenics still alive and well in scientific publishing?
While the bogus science of eugenics — the idea that the human race can be…
Opinion: Medicare’s Part D policy is blocking progress needed to achieve Black health equity
A new and effective class of anti-obesity medicines, along with lifestyle interventions and sometimes bariatric…
National Academies proposes reimagining health care to fix ‘fundamental flaws’ that underlie inequity
The nation’s longstanding racial and ethnic health inequities will not improve unless Congress steps in…
How a Baltimore neuroscience study is rewriting Black America’s relationship with medical research
Priscilla Agnew-Hines will never be able to forget that day in early 2020. On March…
Opinion: It’s been 60 years since Freedom Summer, yet the fight for affordable, compassionate, and equitable health care is still going on
Sixty years ago this month, a courageous initiative created by civil rights activists and physicians…
NIH wanted to make cancer research more diverse. The effort turned out to be a costly failure
Government researchers hoped to attract a more diverse group of patients for clinical research by…
Opinion: Obesity drugs pose a big challenge for health care equity
Weight loss treatments have the potential to revolutionize health care in rich countries. They are…
New obesity drugs are seemingly everywhere. Black Americans feel left out
STAT teamed up with Word In Black, a network of 10 Black news publishers, to…
Black voices, Black bodies: Life in the age of Ozempic
STAT teamed up with Word In Black, a network of 10 Black news publishers, to…
Black Americans’ risk for breast cancer gains clarity in analysis of 40,000 genomes
Hundreds of genetic variants can nudge someone’s risk of breast cancer up or down or…
Removing race adjustment from lung test could mean higher disability payments for Black vets
Removing a patient’s race from an equation used to assess lung function — a change…
Black women founders offer health tech solutions to combat Black maternal mortality
When Black people receive maternal care, they are often not treated the same as white…
In military medicine, study shows rank and race affect care
Higher ranking military officers receive more resources and better care than low ranking military officers,…
Genetic variant common among West African descendants contributes to large cardiovascular disease burden
Among cardiologists, it’s known that transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis, a type of heart disease, is caused…
STAT+: Equity, technology, and costs top of mind for life science’s leaders
Physicians, researchers, CEOs, reporters, and more gathered in downtown Boston Wednesday night to celebrate STAT’s…
Health disparities and premature deaths run deep, even in best-performing states
A new analysis of health inequities in the United States shows that every state has…
Opinion: Personalized medicine: We’re not there yet
When Francis Collins, then-director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, testified before Congress in…
Why very few people who are eligible for a cochlear implant actually get one
Cochlear implants have successfully improved hearing loss for decades, but few people who qualify for…
Disparities in donor acceptance rates point to need for more equitable heart transplant care
When a patient is going through end-stage heart failure, the best treatment is to get…
STAT+: A scientific mystery highlights the blind spots in genomics databases
The two patients had both died young from heart problems. When researchers looked at their…
STAT+: U.K. researchers warn about biases in medical devices, health care algorithms
LONDON — Regulators, clinicians, and health care algorithm developers need to take additional steps to…
‘All of Us’ reports half of the genomes it has sequenced are from non-Europeans
Six years ago, the National Institutes of Health placed its biggest ever bet on precision…
STAT+: Digital tools helped lower blood pressure in marginalized patient groups
If you have high blood pressure, it’s increasingly likely that your doctor or your insurer…
Opinion: Former U.S. surgeons general: The U.S. should ban menthol cigarettes
As former U.S. surgeons general, we call on the Biden administration to immediately finalize Food…
‘Where you live shouldn’t determine how you get cancer’: An oncologist on global disparities
The prediction is dire: Cancer cases around the world are expected to surge 77% by…
FDA urged to move faster to fix pulse oximeters for darker-skinned patients
The Food and Drug Administration should move more quickly to ensure pulse oximeters — the…
Clues from mice could help explain why women face a higher risk of autoimmune disorders
Researchers have long known that women are more likely to develop autoimmune disorders than men,…
Opinion: The emergency room is where the United States’ social problems come home to roost
From “Legacy” by Uché Blackstock, M.D., published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group,…
A call to add sexual orientation and gender identity data to electronic health records
There are more openly LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. than ever, but little is known…
STAT+: A Harvard course seeks to put food on the table in medical education
BOSTON — Doctors often don’t have a lot of time to chat with patients during…