Physician Training Key in Reducing Health Disparities

By Mike Porter

All medical students and physicians should learn about racial and ethnic health disparities in order to help eliminate them, according to a report published today in the "Annals of Internal Medicine."

Racial and ethnic minorities often receive lower quality health care compared to whites, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, education, access and other factors, according to the report from lead author Wally R. Smith, M.D., professor of medicine and medical director of the Center on Health Disparities at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"Well trained physicians can play a key role in eliminating health disparities, but most doctors have received little or no training on these issues," Smith said.

The report, "Recommendations for Teaching about Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health and Health Care," recommends a core set of facts about health disparities that should be understood by all doctors. It also provides teaching methods, venues and resources to assist in teaching.

"These are complex problems, and so far there have been very few medical school courses or residency-training curricula focused on understanding health disparities, partly because there haven't been well-accepted guidelines on what physicians need to know," Smith said.

Recommendations for helping physicians eliminate disparities include teaching clinicians how to communicate effectively with individual patients from varied backgrounds, facilitating physician activism in local communities and providing ways for physicians to work together to promote broader social changes that can affect health.

Smith and eight other experts who authored the report originally were brought together by the Society of General Internal Medicine to develop recommendations for training in internal medicine.  But their completed report is aimed at all medical students, resident trainees and physicians.

The report may be found at http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/147/9/654.