How race became ubiquitous in medical decision-making tools

Starting in the 1990s , the National Institutes of Health began requiring the collection and reporting of racial data in its funded research.

But to a new generation of researchers, that quantification enabled the development of algorithms that misused race as a health risk factor.

In some instances, researchers devising new algorithms uncritically accepted faulty ideas about racial differences.

Overimplistic thinking about race has been repeated across medical specialties.

In obstetrics, the unfounded slavery-era notion that the pelvises of Black women were narrow, “degraded and animalized” In pulmonology, a sweeping generalization that Black people have lower lung function led physicians to long overlook chronic lung disease in Black patients.

The American Thoracic Society urged that race and ethnicity should no longer be used to interpret spirometry results.

“One might have expected X-ray technologies, which see through the skin to deeper structures beneath, to be spared racialization. They were not.” To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page..