Health and Race

Paper Summary:

The paper examines how there is bias in medical treatment between blacks and whites, as much as the health profession might not care to admit it. The four articles discussed in the paper look at this disparity and why it exists. The paper discusses how, as more health care professionals begin to understand the disparity of health care between the races, more studies have been conducted to discover these racial differences. The paper further examines how, while we know that there is a disparity between black and white life expectancy, we do not know what class (such as income, work, or education) has to do with this disparity.

From the Paper:

"There is a tendency to treat race and class as the same thing, and attribute racial differences in health care to biological differences between blacks and whites. In the 1850s, for example, many people believed blacks were inferior to whites in just about all areas. This idea is antiquated now. The ideas many of these studies about black and white medical differences, and how they were conducted, may seem antiquated one hundred years from now, too, due to the exclusion of class in the studies."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bach, P.B. et. al. "Primary Care Physicians who Treat Blacks and Whites." New England Journal of Medicine. 2004; 351:6. 575-583.
• Cooper, Richard S. Kaufman, Jay S. and Ward, Pyle. "Race and Genomics." New England Journal of Medicine. 2003, 348:12. 1166-1175.
• Daniels, Jessie and Schulz, Amy J. "Constructing Whiteness in health Disparities Research." Gender, Race, Class, and Health. 89-119.
• Kawachi, Ichiro, Daniels, Norman, and Robinson, Dean E. "Health Disparities by Race and Class: Why Both Matter." Health Affairs. Vol. 24 Num.2. 341-352.

More papers on Health and Race:

• Essay # 139206 : "Children's Healthcare and Race"
• Essay # 89571 : "Health and Culture"
• Book Review # 101657 : "R. Hofrichter's "Health and Social Justice"

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