Healthcare Equity Resources

The medical profession must promote justice in the health care system. Physicians should work to eliminate discrimination in health care, whether based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion or any other social category.

- Charter on Professionalism, ABIM 2005

Our educational community is intent on understanding barriers to care for all patient populations we treat. This page contains resources our academic care teams reference as they understand and work to lower barriers to care experienced by our patients, care team or community.
References for Bias, Health Equity and Barriers to Care
Note: References posted are for personal educational use by faculty and residents. Beyond such use, written permission must be requested from the author or publisher.
Systemic Bias in Health Care

In Focus: Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care by Confronting Racism

Martha Hostetter and Sarah Klein
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/2018/sep/focus-reducing-racial-disparities-health-care-confronting
Compared with whites, members of racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive preventive health services and ofen receive lower-quality care. They also have worse health outcomes for certain conditions. To combat these disparities, advocates say health care professionals must explicitly acknowledge that race and racism factor into health care.
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Systemic Bias in Health Care

Implicit bias in healthcare professionals: a systematic review

Chloë FitzGerald* and Samia Hurst
BMC Medical Ethics (2017) 18:19
The evidence indicates that healthcare professionals exhibit the same levels of implicit bias as the wider population. The interactions between multiple patient characteristics and between healthcare professional and patient characteristics reveal the complexity of the phenomenon of implicit bias and its influence on clinician-patient interaction.
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Implicit Bias

Implicit Bias in Health Care

Fitzgerald, Hurst
The Joint Commission, Division of Health Care Improvement, April, 2016.
In this update written on the 15th anniversary of the IOM's report, Unequal Treatment, the Joint Commission gives a present state assessment of bias in medical care. Key concepts include implicit or unconscious bias bias and health outcomes. Steps to assess clinical environments for bias and ways to reduce it are outlined.
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Implicit Bias

Unequal Treatment

Daniel H., et al.
Unequal Treatment: Understanding Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, Summary, Institute of Medicine,2002. Full Text at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10260
"How could bias, prejudice, and stereotyping contribute to unequal treatment, particularly given that healthcare providers are sworn to beneficence and cannot, by law, discriminate against any patient on the basis of race, ethnicity, color or national origin? This brief summary of the IOM Unequal Treatment report addresses this question and summarizes other relevant findings..."
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