It’s not uncommon to feel a tinge of anxiety before heading to the doctor’s office. But for many Black Americans, that anxiety is coupled with the fear that we’re going to be treated differently based on the color of our skin.
At least, that’s what a new study from KFF found. Researchers surveyed 6,300 adults about their experience with the healthcare industry, and the findings were troubling.
Roughly 60 percent of Black adults said they prepare themselves for possible insults and/or have felt the need to be careful with their appearance to be treated fairly. These concerns don’t just go away once inside the doctor’s office: One out of every four Black Americans noted a negative interaction with a healthcare provider that they felt was based on race.
Roughly 22 percent of Black adults who were pregnant or gave birth in the last 10 years said that they were refused pain medication that they thought they needed, compared to 10 percent of white adults.
All of this would be bad enough if the only consequence was hurt feelings, but the fallout runs so much deeper.
The survey found that these negative experiences often led to worse health outcomes and being less likely to seek care or having to switch providers and lose continuity of care.
Of course, we don’t need to rely on one study to showcase the problems with racism in the healthcare industry. The longest-running survey of Black Women’s health, conducted at Boston University, found links between racial discrimination and a host of serious medical issues.
The Root wrote about this study late last month:
Perhaps the most illuminating part of the research has to do with the role of racial discrimination in healthcare outcomes. Over the last 28 years, researchers were able to link racism aimed at Black women to increased risks of diabetes, hypertension, accelerated aging, asthma, and heart disease.
The fact that so many Black Americans feel they have to dress a certain way to be given adequate care is a marker of how far off we are from an equitable health care industry.