Over the past few months more healthcare articles have featured a new (at least for me) statistical methodology: mediation analysis. It doesn’t prove causality, but it can assign a value to the impact of a variable on an outcome. More usefully, it can help suggest what factors we can leverage using public health measures, regulation, or legislation.
Racial disparities in healthcare
The New York Times recently featured a new study by Christopher Tessum and colleagues on disproportionate exposures to people of color from fine particle (PM2.5) emissions, raising questions about environmental injustice.
Our country continues to be plagued by maternal deaths, and there are disparities in outcomes when stratified by race or ethnicity. So what’s going on? A new study that looks back over 18 years searches for some answers.
Race is a social construct; until we consider healthcare and research, where it is an increasingly outdated biomarker. Before treatment disparities get worse, we need to have a discussion. Let’s get started.