To tackle race in clinical guidelines, researchers seek alternatives to federal dollars
As federal grants to study the use of race in clinical algorithms dry up researchers are looking for other funding sources.
Over the last five years, health systems, medical societies, and their clinicians have been working to unravel the role of race in clinical practice. After clinical algorithms that use race as a variable came under scrutiny in 2020, several commonly used tools have been revised to align with medicine’s understanding that race is not a biological construct, but a social one.
That work has been far from easy — and isn’t getting any easier for health equity researchers and clinical guideline developers building evidence-based practices to benefit all patients. Race can appear to predict disease risk, but when it’s used as a factor in clinical decisions, it can contribute to health disparities, even leading to denied care for some patients. Federal grants tackling that issue are drying up, and health agencies are scrubbing out any mentions of health equity. But researchers are hoping to make progress by turning to alternative funding sources.
