Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #104195

Janice A. Sabin, MSW, PhC, School of Social Work, University of Washington, PO Box 354900, 4101 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105, 2065255139, sabinja@u.washington.edu, Anthony Greenwald, PhD, Psychology, University of Washington, Box 351525, Seattle, WA 98105, and Frederick Rivara, MD, MPH, Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, University of Washington, 325 Ninth Avenue, Box 359960, Seattle, WA 98104.

Recent evidence indicates that provider behavior, attitudes and beliefs play a role in unequal treatment of racial/ethnic groups in health care. (1, 2) There has been speculation that provider unconscious (implicit) racial bias contributes to unequal treatment in health care. Provider implicit racial bias and the association between provider bias and medical care has not been measured. The aim of this research is to empirically identify one mechanism, implicit racial bias, to explain why and how disparate treatment occurs. The research question this research seeks to answer is: Does provider implicit racial bias affect medical decision-making and medical care? The study will consist of a single session survey of physicians using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a clinical case decision vignette to measure provider implicit and explicit racial bias, and bias in medical care decision-making. The subjects for this study will be University of Washington physicians; pediatric residents, fellows and emergency medicine physicians. Data analysis is expected to be completed by September, 2005. Individual level racial bias is important not only because it may lead to discrimination, but also because the behaviors may aggregate and become institutionalized. The IAT can be adapted to measure provider attitudes toward gender, age, sexual orientation, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, and other racial/ethnic groups and equity of medical care. The findings of this experiment will use theory and methodology from social psychology to inform future innovative design and evaluation of interventions in medical/health sciences education, aimed at reducing provider implicit bias in decision-making.

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