Health Disparities conference draws crowd

Sessions at the Texas Conference on Health Disparities sparked some serious — and occasionally heated — discussions about topics that are just as sensitive in other areas as in the health care industry.

The UNT Health Science Center and the Texas Center for Health Disparities hosted the third annual Texas Conference on Health Disparities from May 29-31.

Two sessions in particular, “What Would a Race-Specific Drug Look Like?” and “Race, Biology and Health,” pointed out that one of the central debates in researching health disparities is how to define various groups who are treated differently.

Jay Kaufman, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, gave the first presentation, followed by Michael Miller, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota.

Whether people are classified by race or by ethnicity (and what exactly those terms mean), itÂ’s still undetermined how much a personÂ’s race should factor into their health care.

One thing is certain, said Kaufman: Health care workers carry the same stereotypes that people in other sectors carry with them.

“Sometimes clinical judgments are shaded by stereotypes we have in the nonscientific world,” he said.

He pointed to various studies that demonstrated this, including one in which actors, playing patients and all using the same script, were viewed differently based on their gender and race by health care workers—for example, the black “patient” was seen as less likely to follow treatment guidelines and assumed to be less wealthy.

How to use race when determining treatment options must be decided through quantitative studies, Kaufman said, studies that are evidence-based and will give certainty about when it will work. The problem with many current studies that may indicate blacks respond differently to certain procedures or medications than whites is that while there may be differences, the differences are not big enough to warrant using them as a reason to carry through with a specific treatment, he said.

“There are a number of relevant clinical traits that we can use instead of race that are much more effective,” he said, such as age, weight and family and personal medical histories.

While Kaufman focused on why racial differences are so small as to be negligible in most instances and warrant further study, Miller discussed the ways in which humans are varied. Variation can be affected by many factors, ranging from random mutations to natural selection to geographical isolation and cultures, and race is both a biological and hypothetical concept, he said.

Genetics is related to race, he said, but the classification of race is arbitrary. Almost everyone has encountered forms that ask one to pick a racial category: white, black, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander and other. These categories do not come close to classifying people and their genetic make-ups, he said.

However, asking people to fill out those forms is a time- and cost-effective tool that can be used in research, because the self-reported race is often close to what genetics would reveal, he said.

Miller and Kaufman both agreed race should not be ignored by researchers, because some things are indeed tied to race, such as socioeconomics. Kaufman pointed out there are other social constructs, such as education and marriage, which often contribute to how a person will fare in the health industry.

The professors also agreed that while there are genetic differences between the races that may influence treatments in the future, there is more variation within each race than between the races. Appropriate research was needed before trying to integrate race into medicine all the time, they said.

Kathryn Cardarelli, chair of the conference and assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at the Health Science Center, said there were 280 registered participants in the conference, which was more than any previous year. Attendance was so large, she said the conference may have to be moved off campus next year to accommodate the crowd.

While the race-based presentations pushed for more research, Cardarelli said that next year sheÂ’s hoping to bring in guests who can speak about research from the funding side. Representatives from foundations or governments who sponsor research could shed some light on where they expect to be directing funds in the near future.

“Funding has always been an issue, and especially with the economy not doing so well right now, organizations across the board are really clamping down on their funding rates,” she said.

Contact Bassett at ebassett@bizpress.net