CLAIMS by

2025-10-22 15:39:28 UTC

Race improperly addresses each individual’s case in medical needs, and is used as too general of a term which inaccurately categorizes individuals, being costly and leaving many individuals leading a shorter and sicker life.

Although race remains common in scientific studies, it is an imprecise and flawed measure that overshadows the social forces that shape people’s health. Truly understanding health disparities means moving beyond race to examine the conditions that determine who stays healthy and who does not.

2025-10-22 15:39:29 UTC

2025-10-22 15:39:32 UTC

While race can help reveal health disparities that lead to inequality, ultimately leading to shorter, sicker lives for those who face these disparities, race itself represents a social construct rather than a biological fact in healthcare. By treating race as a biological fact, it enforces incorrect ideas about race, as it is not something genetic, but rather something we have given meaning in our modern world.

2025-10-22 15:39:34 UTC

Abandoning race due to a biological misunderstanding prevents the ability for it to be reinterpreted for a different comprehension in the social sense, which allows for a clearer definition as to why these disparities exist.

2025-10-22 15:39:46 UTC

An absence of specificity and lack of focus on sub-populations may not only mask disparities, but contribute directly to them. Along with inaccurate terminology for talking about race in medical contexts, these misrepresentations of race perpetuate stigmas as physicians and researchers erroneously focus on biological or genetic patterns rather than the historical context of how certain groups have been treated

2025-10-22 15:39:50 UTC

Although race is an outdated and flawed concept that overlooks the full diversity of the U.S., it remains necessary in health research today to identify persistent disparities. Ultimately, race may become irrelevant when health inequities are better understood as rooted in economic factors rather than ancestry or place of origin

2025-10-22 15:40:06 UTC

When physicians are taught to racially categorizing patients, they are taught to look out of certain health attributes in minority patients, often as “prevalence without context”. If these racial hierarchies become concretized and the role of racism remains obscured, then the patients who trust physicians to heal them will instead receive inadequate care. This is a betrayal of medical ethics, perpetuating a system where minority patients live sicker, shorter lives and are systematically denied the promise of equitable health - costing many of them the “American dream”.

2025-10-22 15:40:26 UTC

While race shouldn’t be the principal classification of biological differences in individuals due to its broad and biased nature, it should still be considered in the visualization and comprehension of medical trends.

By reforming how one employs race in the medical health care system, one can transform "race" and treat it as a tool that exposes the lived experiences of different ethnicities and populations, not for the act of racism, but to create a highlight of minorities and reveal health inequities.

2025-10-22 15:40:27 UTC

2025-10-22 15:40:36 UTC

While race can be a helpful tool in understanding the social, economic, environmental, etc., factors that impact health, it is often misused. The legacy of race science continues to influence medical education, resulting in biases, power dynamics, and health disparities.

2025-10-22 15:40:48 UTC

The fluidity of race as a concept in medicine, must be recognized for any further reformation to occur.

2025-10-22 15:40:58 UTC

Although reforms are to be made in terms of classification into certain identities, race is a necessary categorization that should remain in use to determine disparities and risks of certain groups of people.

2025-10-22 15:41:20 UTC

Rather than simply using race to sort people and their needs into certain groups, using it in a positive light to actively identify hidden disparities can better support those who are often marginalized. By reframing the way race is viewed in healthcare, it can be applied alongside other factors to improve health outcomes.

2025-10-22 15:41:21 UTC

Recognizing race as conceptual rather than biological reveals that what seems neutral or scientific is often shaped by deeper social assumptions and historical forces that continue to influence public understanding.

2025-10-22 15:42:16 UTC

Utilizing race as a proxy for health outcomes without closely examining its socio-political construction leads to harmful oversimplifications that cover the real sources of these health disparities, such as racism, immigration experiences, language barriers, and socioeconomic status. As Addouds examines through the realization paradox of Arab Americans, and Wu demonstrates through the erasure of Asian American genetics by the minored myth, a more precise, currently dependent, and multidimensional framework is urgently needed.