Dear All,
I came across this very interesting article in the Science Magazine about how various researchears are trying to improve our understanding of the effects of race on health. Please see attached and share your thoughts on this forum.
Enjoy your weekend,
Lydia
I think this is a really interesting article... something we have debated in medical school when it comes to presenting patients and whether race should go into the "one-liner". Some attendings really want to know the patient's race outright as they think race is a powerful risk factor for certain diseases. Other attendings want to hear race in the social part of the history, as they believe that race is more powerful driver of social determinants of disease. I'd be interested in expanding upon this when we talk about measurement because I think nobody really clarifies what they are trying to measure when they ask about race. I do think that race has something to do with "ancestry" genetics and does put you at higher risk for some diseases (i.e. CF in caucasians) but in other disease race might be a proxy for a social determinant of disease rather than genetics. Makes me rethink of what we were trying to measure when we have asked about race in our studies...
