Equity in Laboratory Medicine

In spite of significant progress in disease diagnosis and treatment, racial and ethnic minorities experience lower quality of care and poorer outcomes for certain conditions than non-minorities. Sequencing of the human genome enabled scientists to re-examine the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics and revealed that race is not an accurate representation of human genetic variation. Nevertheless, the use of race as a biological proxy persists in several areas of science and medicine. The consideration of race in clinical care is nuanced. Some argue that race serves as a proxy for underlying population genetics and is therefore clinically useful; however, in the absence of patient-specific genetic ancestry data the question of whether it is more beneficial or deleterious to use racial or ethnic groupings remains a topic of debate.  This session will review the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics and discuss the implications of the use of these categories in medicine.  

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the concepts of race, ethnicity and genetics

2. Discuss the limitations associated with using race-based classifications to describe biological differences  

3. Critically assess the utility of race and ethnicity in science and medicine