Shih, Sofia_Senior Thesis 2026

The Misuse of Race in Medicine: How The Combination of Society and Doctors is Growing Health Disparity Gaps Sofia Shih Senior Thesis | 2026

The Misuse of Race in Medicine: How The Combination of Society and Doctors is Growing Health Disparity Gaps

Sofia Shih Dr. Alonge January 20, 2026

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Introduction In the medical world, some people believe race is a biological factor, that without race, we are unable to diagnose patients properly. Some argue that the use of race in medicine should be completely abolished, while others say that it should be kept around, but not in the sense of using race to diagnose patients.

In my thesis, I diagnose how race is currently being used in medicine and its negative effects. I then propose the changes that we, as a society, should make to reduce health disparities. Using research articles published in a variety of medical journals, I highlight how medical schools are pushing a race-based agenda on student doctors. After establishing the bias that is present in our society, I use Arline Geronimus’s term “weathering” to explain how negative societal pressures have a detrimental effect on a person’s psychological and physiological health. I conclude that understanding who is and isn’t getting sufficient care based on their race can help the healthcare system understand where it needs to put more resources to provide equal healthcare treatment.

Therefore, while the use of race as a diagnostic tool in treating patients is something that needs to be abolished, the use of race as a diagnostic tool in treating health disparities should continue.

The Curriculum of Medical Schools The use of race within medicine is something that has been debated for years. In the 2021 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers, led by primary researcher Christine Amutah, proposed an idea that encapsulates race within the healthcare system in an article titled “Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias”. The researchers looked into the curricula of medical schools and found that the schools have been teaching race as a biological factor.

While looking at how race is taught from a biological sense

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through five key areas, researchers argue that medical schools aren’t teaching race in a well-representative way to the new generation of doctors. These five key areas, called “domains” in the article, are semantics, prevalence without context, race-based diagnostic bias, pathologizing race, and race-based clinical guidelines. These domains separate and individually dissect how different parts of medicine, from research projects to diagnostic tests, are rooted in race. Not only are these domains present in modern-day medicine, but they are also being taught to future doctors, continuing an unjust cycle. “Social medicine or equivalent courses discuss race in a nuanced manner,” Amutah says, “but misrepresentations arise in all other courses, including organ-system blocks and basic science classes.”1 In all different types of medical school classes, race is being solidified as a biological factor, which is solidifying bias in doctors from the very beginning. The five key areas of the NEJM article separate different misrepresentations of race into the ways the use of race in medicine is harmful.

Society’s Hand in Health Disparities In addition to the presence of race in medicine, there is also a harmful aspect of race and racism present in society. In Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life on the Body in an Unjust Society,2 Professor of Public Health Arline Geronimus argues that racist societies and how people are treated in everyday 1

Amutah, Christina, Kaliya Greenidge, Adjoa Mante, Michelle Munyikwa, Sanjna Surya, Eve Higginbotham, David Jones, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, Dorothy Roberts, Jennifer Tsai, and Jaya Aysola. 2021. “Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias.”New England Journal of Medicine 384 (9): 872.

2 Geronimus, Arline T. Weathering : The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society. First trade paperback edition. New York: Back Bay Books, 2024.

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life play a large role in a person’s psychological and physiological health. Both within and outside of the healthcare system, there is a constant presence of disparities, which lead to deeper issues. In the introduction of her book, Geronimus says, “I have concluded that a process I call weathering, a process that encompasses the physiological effects of living in marginalized communities that bear the brunt of racial, ethnic, religious, and class discrimination, is critical to understanding and eliminating population health inequalities.”3 Through her argument, Geronimus highlights that living in situations of inequality has a stronger effect than people realize. She implies that while people might not realize it, society has a role in a person’s health. Geronimus’s weathering theory demonstrates a connection between how a person’s lived experiences influence their health and how an experience that might seem minor can actually have detrimental effects on a person. The combined effects of weathering and the misuse of race within medicine have led to thousands of misdiagnoses that only widen the gap in modern-day health disparities.

The Domains in Society While society as a whole has a large effect on how people are treated, at their core, treatments come from doctors. There is always the hope that doctors are practicing medicine in a completely unbiased headspace, but it’s hard for them to do that when bias is completely woven into their medical school curriculum. “Misrepresenting Race” makes claims on how the medical school curriculum is failing at dismantling health disparities through other domains, such as “semantics”. Semantics is described as “using imprecise and nonbiological labels that inaccurately conflate race and ancestry”.4 In other words, the 3 4

Geronimus, 10.

Amutah, 873.

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medical curriculum teaches an over-generalization of ethnic/racial groups that, in turn, perpetuates health disparities because different subgroups fall through the cracks. In order to reduce the health disparities that come with clumping large amounts of ethnic groups together, society needs to invest in a more granular system of classifying people. This idea is applicable to a 2022 analysis for Asian Americans, published in the Gerontological Society of America, titled “Addressing Health Disparities Among Older Asian American Populations: Research, Data, and Policy”. This analysis highlighted the missing pieces that grouping a large race into one category causes. The authors point out key health disparities that are missed by most people because of how society as a whole characterizes Asians. In society, Asians are considered the “model minority.” Deemed smart, hard-working, and better than other minorities, society focuses on the positives of the race and ignores the negatives. Despite the characterization that most Asians become doctors and therefore are rich, there are extreme income disparities that are covered by the model minority theory.

While the health of Asians as a whole is positive, when looking at the health of impoverished Asians, there is a clear gap. The article states, “Compared with older adults not in poverty within the same racial or ethnic group, Asians in poverty had the highest prevalence ratios of physical, cognitive, and functional disabilities.”5 The disparity between impoverished and financially comfortable elderly Asians is a large difference; however, because medical students are taught an overarching generalization that all Asians are rich and healthy, the disparity is overlooked. In addition to the generalization of how Asians are characterized, there is also an overgeneralization of the Asian ethnic group as a whole. While 5

Bei Wu, Xiang Qi, “Addressing Health Disparities Among Older Asian American Populations: Research, Data, and Policy,” Public Policy & Aging Report, Volume 32, Issue 3, 2022, 106.

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the term “Asian” is constantly used to describe anyone from the continent of Asia, there is a large difference within that group.

Someone from Japan who lived through the atomic bombs is not the same as someone who has spent their entire life in Mumbai.

While both of these people are counted as Asian within census and medical records, they have completely different backstories, which change how they are treated. The grouping of different, smaller ethnic groups into a large, overgeneralized group has proven to disguise and hide health disparities. By saying that, overall, Asians are a model minority and therefore all healthy, the generalization hides the large disparity between impoverished elderly Asians and comfortable elderly Asian Americans.

A second domain, called “prevalence without context,” continues to show how the teachings of race as a biological factor prove to be damaging to minorities. Prevalence without context is described as “presenting racial/ethnic differences in diseases without contextualization.”6 In “The Contested Whiteness of Arab Identity in the United States: Implications for Health Disparities Research”, a 2021 article in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers Abboud, Chebli, and Rabelais argue against classifying Arabs as White. The article explains that in most census and health reports, Arabs are required to select their ethnicity as White, virtually erasing their Arab identity from health forms and data collections. They claim that, “this classification, a form of structural violence, has left them invisible and their needs unaddressed.”7 Defining “structural violence” as “social forces that perpetuate harm to certain groups of people, producing and 6

Amutah, 873.

Abboud, Sarah, and Perla Chebli, Em Rabelais, “The Contested Whiteness of Arab Identity in the United States: Implications for Health Disparities Research”, American Journal of Public Health 109, no. 11 (November 1, 2019): pp. 1580.

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reproducing inequities in health,” the article argues that by generalizing Arabs into a completely separate group, by considering them “White”, the medical world is making Arabs invisible. Although Arabs “phenotypically can pass as White,” they do not get the same sociostatus within society that comes with being White. This disparity in treatment, despite being classified as the same, opens gaps of inequality that result in the mistreatment of Arabs.

An Application of “Weathering” to Arabs Weathering, a term coined by Professor of Public Health Arline Geronimus, is the concept that a person’s lived experiences affect their physiological and psychological health.9 The issue of Arabs being misclassified and wrongly represented runs deeper than Arabs being classified as White; even when Arabs are rightly classified, they are thought to be monolithic. Not only are Arabs grouped into the wrong ethnic group, but there are also overarching generalizations about Arabs. With no regard for different cultures within the Arab community, society assumes all Arabs are Muslims. This marker, following 9/11 in America, perpetuated occurrences of “weathering” for all Arabs that lived in America, no matter their true religion. For Arab Americans, the stress of their community being looked at as public enemy number one took a toll on their health. Studies showed Arab women were more likely to give birth to underweight babies directly following 9/11, showing a correlation between the two events. Despite there 8

Abboud, 1580.

Geronimus, Arline T. Weathering : The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society. First trade paperback edition. New York: Back Bay Books, 2024 9

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being a pattern of underweight Arab babies, due to the teachings that Arabs were overall less healthy, no one thought to look at the context behind why this was happening. The underweight babies, the stress, the weathering, all tie back into the issue of race being used in a biological way within the medical world. Had Arabs been classified as their own ethnic group instead of White in the first place, it would’ve been clearer that there were large health disparities between majorities and minorities in the healthcare system, and had Arabs been identified by their true religions and cultures instead of being generalized, there would have been less of a detrimental effect on the whole race following 9/11.

Additionally, had society been kinder to those of Arab descent, less weathering could have occurred, which translates into fewer medical issues as a whole.

The Effects of “Weathering” in Terms of Mental Health In her book, Geronimus introduces the term“biopsychosocial” to explain how “the psychological dimensions are often activated by the psychosocial ones.”10 For every medical issue, there are biological factors, psychological factors, and social factors, all of which come together to make each case unique. Weathering, combined with the biopsychosocial model, further implies that there is not just one factor when it comes to a person’s health. It implies that there are factors that one might not look at, like a person’s lived experience, that can change a person’s physiological health. In a 2025 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found correlations between discrimination and mental health disorders.

The study used data from the US National Health Interview Survey to look for connections between adults who have faced discrimination and adults with diagnosed mental health disorders.

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Geronimus, 11.

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The study found a clear connection, stating: “Our findings demonstrate that greater exposure to discrimination was associated with increased odds of positive screening results for depression, anxiety, and both depression and anxiety across the general US adult population and within all gender and racial and ethnic groups.”11 The study found that for the population that was tested, the more discrimination they faced, the more likely they were to develop a mental illness. It specifically found a stronger correlation between race and ethnicity discrimination; there was still a correlation to mental health illnesses and sex-based discrimination, but it was weaker. The study concluded that their findings suggested a need to raise more awareness of the correlation in order to help reduce disparities and overall help with mental health crises. There is a lack of comprehension in modern-day society on how insults and labels impact a person’s health. Studies such as this one clearly lay out the effects of society. Theories such as Geronimus’s weathering theory highlight the reasons behind the impact of society.

The Prevalence of “Weathering” in Terms of Race Through Personal Stories It’s understood that things like bullying and ostracizing can lead to higher rates of depression and feelings of unworthiness, but Geronimus highlights how there is more to it. “My research,” Geronimus writes, “shows that pervasive racist and classist ideologies activate biological processes that wear out the physical and mental health of people of color across all economic classes.”12 Through her analysis of different races and cultures and how their 11

Monica L. Wang and Marie-Rachelle Narcisse, “Discrimination, Depression, and Anxiety Among US Adults,” JAMA Network Open 8, no. 3 (2025): e252404–e252404, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.2404. 8.

12 Geronimus, 14.

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bodies biologically reacted to living in different environments, Geronimus found a common thread between them all. She found that exposure to inequalities, no matter the race or economic status of a person, proved to have detrimental effects on a person’s well-being. Geronimus’s idea can be seen in real life through the eyes of African American man Jared Walker in his personal essay “Breathe.”13 As Walker speeds down a highway, stressing over the health of his son, he remembers how stress has been a bad factor for his family in the past. Upon his wife’s insistence, he slows down his driving while reflecting on his family’s history: “Go ahead and do it, and while you're at it, remind yourself that stress kills.” Walker recounts, “You don’t want to end up like your father, after all, who only lived to be sixty-eight.”14 Through his memory, Walker insinuates that stress killed his father, likely due to the environment that surrounded him. Walker’s son gets misdiagnosed by the doctor, when the doctor infers that because he is African American, he is a carrier of syphilis, which leaves him vulnerable to another seizure. Walker forces himself to breathe under the fear of what would happen to him if he were to get angry, and Walker’s constant need to breathe to keep himself calm reflects the stress that he puts his body through. The stress boils down to the inequalities he’s experienced and seen. From hearing about police brutality against African Americans to feeling racially profiled at the doctor’s office, stressors surround Walker. The disparities that follow Walker around, just because of his race, harm him through stress, stress that stems from his lived experiences.

Lived experiences are a person’s personal story, but what constitutes them as being “important” to a person’s health? It is hard to draw links to how a person’s experience can physically 13

Jerald Walker, “Breathe,” How to Make a Slave (Columbus, Mad Creek Books, 2020) 14 Walker, 58.

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affect their body, and it’s hard to find a reason behind the weathering theory. People who are unable to see the connection will disregard the concept and move on with life as if their actions don’t have consequences. It can be claimed that the weathering theory and the biopsychosocial model are just means for minorities to place blame when something does not go their way. Despite these claims, personal stories such as “A Black Woman’s Pandemic Birth Experience”15 by Alexis Grant-Panting give prime examples of how lived experiences can physically harm a person.

While trying to get prenatal care after moving to Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic, essayist Alexis Grant-Panting finds herself stressed and scared. She describes the fear she felt as a result of a culmination of experiences, saying, “I felt like just another anonymous Black woman. The feeling of the unknown, combined with all of the statistics I had read about Black women birthing in Texas and my poor experience at the ED, left me terrified that no one would care if I or my baby lived or died.”16 Not only was Grant-Panting left worrying after her own experience, but the experience of others added additional stress. Her doctors, the loss of her grandmother, the recent move to Texas, and the ongoing global pandemic left her distressed. All together, the effects of existing in a society that didn’t treat her fairly left her and her unborn child more vulnerable. Unrepresented and virtually alone, Grant-Panting was left to stress over her life, something that exacerbated her already precarious condition. Her lived experiences affected her psychological health, which in turn affected her physiological health. Grant-Panting’s psychological distress that stemmed from the lived experiences of other pregnant Black women in Texas speaks to how there was a precedent before 15

Grant-Panting, Alexis, "A Black Woman's Pandemic Birth Experience."

Health Affairs 40, no. 3 (2019): 1456-1460.

16 Grant-Panting, 1458.

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her. This precedent of pregnant Black women being mistreated is part of a cause-and-effect model in our medical system. The cause is not only how medical professionals treated them during pregnancy, but also in the predetermined prejudices that were taught to said medical professionals in their training, which results in the effect of Black women feeling mistreated.

Research Behind the Effects of Weathering ​ In a separate paper published by Arline Geronimus, Geronimus et al. look at data to backup the effects of weathering that highlights in her book. The article, titled “‘Weathering’ and Age Patterns of Allostatic Load Scores Among Blacks and Whites in the United States,” looks at allostatic load scores , which is a measure of a physiological “wear and “tear” between Black and White individuals. Geronimus et al. looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examnination Survery to look for race and gender based differences in allostatic load scores.

Through data examination, the researchers found correlations between race and lower allostatic scores, saying “The weathering effects of living in a race-conscious society may be greatest among those Blacks most likely to engage in high-effort coping.”17 The correlation found between Black individuals and low allostatic scores was found to be stronger than any correlation between White individuals and low allostatic scores, indicating that race does play a significant factor in the patterns of weathering.

Additionally, Geronimus et al. did work to deduce that the difference in allostatic scores did not come from poverty due to racial difference. This, combined with the correlation found in the 17

Arline T. Geronimus et al., “‘Weathering’ and Age Patterns of Allostatic Load Scores Among Blacks and Whites in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 5 (2006): 826–33, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2004.060749. 1.

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study, highlights the fact that a person’s lived experiences truly has an effect on their wellbeing. This knowledge, combined with the personal accounts from Grant-Panting and Walker signifies that changes need to be made in how society and the medical world is using race.

How Race Should Be Used In “Recalibrating the Use of Race in Medical Research,”, John Ioannidis et al. highlight the two different sides of the argument and come to a consensus of how race should be using, saying: “Just as the lens of science was used to establish a flawed premise of biological race-based differences, so should science now focus on illuminating that which is represented by race and become a trailblazer toward better health equity.”18 The authors argue that race should be kept around to identify health disparities, but abolished in the diagnosis process of patients. Explaining that “biological race-based differences” are already proven flawed, the article talks into the next steps of how to continue redefining race to better the health inequalities that currently consume the healthcare system. “Rather than abandoning the use of race in medicine, we believe we should transform the way it is used,” Amutah says, “embracing a more rigorous, multidisciplinary, and evidence-based understanding of how race, racism, and race-based science contribute to inequities in health and health care.”19 The article explains that while race can be harmful in medicine, when used the right way, it can be used positively. They continue on, saying: “Unequal treatment in health care due to structural and

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John P. A. Ioannidis et al., “Recalibrating the Use of Race in Medical Research,” JAMA 325, no. 7 (2021): 623–24, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.0003. 624.

19 Amutah, 875.

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unconscious racism can be measured and eliminated only if we continue to discuss race.” ​ Taking the domains from the medical school study, society can understand on a deeper level why seemingly harmless teachings are actually detrimental to sick patients. Using Amutah’s domains as an example, the teachings of race as a biological factor are one of the first things that should be changed. By continuing to teach new doctors to use race as a biological factor, medical schools are aggravating gaps, which is exactly what Ioannidis says needs to stop. If schools are still teaching domains such as “race-based diagnostic bias,” the gap will only widen. Race-based diagnostic bias is one of the primary reasons misdiagnoses happen.

By priming students to expect certain illnesses to be tied to certain races, the predetermined bias in doctors’ minds can cause unconscious or even conscious medical decisions that don’t look at the full picture. In addition, the teachings of race-based clinical guidelines can be the difference between a patient receiving a transplant or not. Ioannidis explains that for treatments such as kidney transplants, there are different thresholds, depending on race, that a patient needs to be at to be eligible for a transplant. As of right now, different variables that depend on race determine kidney function, which in turn determines a patient’s spot on the transplant list. Researchers state the biggest issue with this: what if a patient is mixed race? The article then goes on to explain the process that happens if the patient is mixed, stating: “If the patient identified as both races or mixed race, the clinician would be left to make the binary choice.”20 While doctors should have discretion in the treatment of their patients, there is also a statistical aspect to medicine. By having these statistics depend on something that isn’t

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Amutah, 4.

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truly a biological factor, there are giant health disparities that aren’t being addressed. ​ Overall, to close health disparity gaps and make a change in how society looks at race, there are changes that have to be made in medicine, medical society, and society as a whole. There are pros and cons to the argument that race should still exist in medicine, but not in a biological sense. While in theory, the process of abolishing race as a biological factor appears to be a step forward in closing the gaps in health disparities, the real issue comes from how the change can realistically be made. Amutah agrees with the idea, citing its recommendation on what the next steps should be. They argue that aspects like the language used and the studies done should be reframed to focus not on the race of the patient, but the biological factors of the patient. In addition to these changes, the article states that the most important aspect that needs to be changed is how society thinks about disparities, saying; “It’s important to recognize that racial/ethnic disparities are defined in terms of social, not biologic, classifications, and therefore such guidelines aim to address outcomes derived from social, not genetic, factors.”21 Furthermore, to truly fix health disparities, there needs to be a shift in society. In the American Journal of Public Health article, Abboud proposes that the first step in helping close gaps from a medical society standpoint is to create a system where everyone is fairly represented. In specifics to helping the Arab population, the article states, “Our recommendations for an easily achievable solution is for institutions, starting with the NIMHD and ideally the NIH as a whole, to revise and expand their definition of health disparity populations to include Arabs.”22 While this article is focused only on one race, this is the building block to making more widespread changes in society. The same 21 22

Amutah, 5.

Abboud, 1583.

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concept of better representing races and ethnicities can be applied when thinking about Asian Americans. Better classifications and specifications between someone who is South-East Asian and someone who is West Asian will greatly help show different disparities within different subgroups of the Asian race. Thirdly, there is a large need to make changes in society as a whole.

Geronimus’s weathering theory highlights how actions have consequences, showing society that what they do and say on a daily basis can actually affect a person’s physical health. With this knowledge, it is up to society to make a change.

Future Changes To Be Made ​ As of right now, practicing doctors are using race as a biological factor to diagnose patients, and future doctors are learning to use race as a biological factor. In order to put an end to the use of race as a biological factor, change starts with the medical schools. Medicals school need to take a look at their curriculum, and make changes to the domains mentioned in Amutah et al.

Clinical guidelines should be switched to be generalized for patients depending on true biological factors such as age, and in the more social setting classes in medical school, there should be clear distinctions between ethnic groups. While we do want to abolish the use of race as a diagnostic factor in medicine, it is important to still properly document the race of patients. By properly documenting the race of patients, researchers can more easily highlight health disparities within communities. In “The Indispensability of Race,” written by Ludovica Lorusso and Fabio Bacchini, Lorusso and Bacchini highlight the important uses of race, saying: “race is indispensable to consider, investigate, and denounce the health effects of multilevel racism, and cannot be eliminated by addressing more specific risk factors in socially

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responsible epidemiology and clinical medicine.” The article argues that while race shouldn’t be used in diagnosing patients, race also cannot be ignored. Lorruso and Bacchini claim that health disparities can’t be fixed if you abolish race; it is still important to have it around. In order to fight the racism that is in the medical world, race needs to be faced head-on instead of ignored or improperly used.

The Future of Race in Medicine and Society No matter what people say, there is always inequality in society. From unfair school systems to unfair medical treatment, our society is rooted in inequality. Through her concepts of “weathering” and “the biopsychosocial”, Geronimus highlights how the inequalities people face have real-world implications on their physiological and psychological health. Using first-hand accounts by Jerald Walker and Alexis Grant-Panting, I concur with Geronimus’s theory, showing that there is a direct correlation between a person’s lived experience and their physical health.

First-hand accounts of weathering instances provide society with a name to a claim, by having someone lay out how they felt wronged by the people who were supposed to help them, these accounts appeal to readers in a more personal way. Understanding that a person’s lived experiences have an impact on their health is a wake-up call for society. The society that we live in today doesn’t truly care for the people in our society. Living in a society full of inequality and unfair treatment isn’t something anyone should go through in any scenario, but drawing the connections that our society is actively harming people should show people that change needs to happen. While Geronimus’s concept applies to anyone of 23

Ludovica Lorusso and Fabio Bacchini, “The Indispensability of Race in Medicine,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 44, no. 5 (2023): 421–34, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-023-09622-6. 1.

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any background, the perspective given in this thesis was of two African American parents. It would be interesting to see how this pattern continues or diverges when looking at perspectives of different races, ages, and families. Later down the line, I would be interested in pursuing this topic on a larger scale, taking experiences from all different types of people living in all different types of countries to see how this might differ depending on a person’s environment. Through further examination and in-depth understanding, Geronimus’s weathering theory is a driving force behind why our unjust, unequal society should be changed. While changes to society are an important step in closing gaps, these gaps will continue to exist and grow unless we change how doctors are being trained and taught.

The racist domains that are being taught in medical school are perpetuating health disparities by having doctors overlook medical issues; however, the abolishment of race in medicine would also perpetuate health disparities. If we as a society continue using race the way we are in medicine, the number of unjust deaths will just grow and grow. Continuing to teach students that race is a biological factor will just add to the already giant issue of health disparities. Without a change in the medical curriculum and the way medicine is currently being practiced, thousands more patients will be mistreated, and the health disparity gaps will only grow. In order to fix what is currently broken, the world of medicine needs to acknowledge that it’s been doing things wrong. The research into medical school curriculum posed by the authors of the article published in the New England Journal of Medicine highlights these issues, but also leaves room for more to think about. This poses the question of whether the idea of race as a biological factor is taught everywhere, or more so in states that have a larger social argument regarding race. It would be interesting to see if a medical school in Alabama is teaching that race is biological to the same degree that

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a medical school in Boston does. In addition, there is also the question of how the recalibrations of race that were discussed in the Journal of the American Medical Association article would work in practice. In an ideal world, we would be able to say “don’t use race as a biological factor,” and there would be an instant shift in how society sees it, but in a society with people of so many different backgrounds and ideas, that’s impossible. To truly make a difference in society regarding health disparities, there needs to be an attitude shift for the whole of society. From professors in medical schools to practicing physicians in hospitals to everyday people on the street, in order to close health disparity gaps, there needs to be an adjustment to how race is used and weaponized.

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