The Secret to Keeping Black Men Healthy

The Secret to Keeping Black Men Healthy? Maybe Black Doctors

Black men have rock bottom anticipation of any ethnos within us.

Much of the gap is explained by greater rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart condition, which afflict poor and poorly educated black men especially.

But why is that? Lack of insurance? Lack of access to health care?

Now, a gaggle of researchers in California has demonstrated that another powerful force could also be at work: a scarcity of black physicians.

In the study, black men seeing black male doctors were far more likely to comply with certain preventive measures than were black men seeing doctors who were white or Asian.

Although 13 percent of the population is black within us , just 4 percent of doctors are black.

The study, published in June by the National Bureau for Economic Research, involved 702 black men in Oakland, Calif., who came to a clinic for a free health screening.

They were randomly assigned to a black male the doctor or one who was white or Asian.

Neither the lads nor the doctors knew that the aim of the study was to ask if a doctor’s race mattered when he or she advised these patients.

Because it clothed, the racial effects weren't subtle.

Diabetes screening was a part of the checkup, and 63 percent of the black men assigned to a black doctor agreed to the screening.

But just 43 percent of these assigned to a doctor who was white or Asian consented to be screened.

Some 62 percent of black men with a black doctor agreed to cholesterol tests, compared to 36 percent assigned to a doctor who wasn't black.

“If their first reaction is, ‘No, I’m not curious about that,’ you want to explore why they said no and address those concerns.”

Dr. ChaRandle Jordan Previous studies are observational — mostly searching earlier data for trends, a substantially weaker sort of evidence — and their results mixed.

“It changed the way I feel,” said Jonathan Skinner, a health care economist at Dartmouth

College, about the new results.

“This study convinced me that the consequences are real.”

The researchers employed minority premedical students to recruit participants by visiting 20 barbershops and two flea markets in Oakland, offering black men vouchers for a free health screening.

The screening was at a clinic found out by the investigators and staffed by 14 black and nonblack doctors.

The lads were offered preventive measures like flu shots and screenings for the vital signs, cholesterol, and diabetes.

The men who came to the clinic offered equal praise for his or her black, white, and Asian doctors. But the patients were much more likely to consent to preventive care — screenings and vaccinations — when their doctor was also black.

If black patients were to comply with this preventive care at these rates within the world, the gap in cardiovascular mortality between black men and therefore the remainder of the population might be reduced by 20 percent, the researchers estimated.

“I don’t think I even have ever had such a robust result, so unambiguous,” said Dr. Marcella Alsan, a professor of drugs at Stanford University and an author of the study.

Why would black doctors have such an effect? Perhaps they used more nonverbal cues to speak empathy, said Dr. Amber E. Barnato, a professor of drugs and health healthcare delivery at Dartmouth College.

In another small study, she used black and white actors to review white doctors’ interactions with patients at the top of life.

Although the doctors said similar things to both black and white actors posing as patients, they stood closer to the white patients, made more eye contact, and touched them more often.

In the new study, Dr. Alsan and her colleagues didn't record patient visits.

But some hints of the differences might be seen in comments the patients and doctors wrote in evaluations of their experiences.

The white and Asian doctors often wrote comments like “weight loss,” “tb test” and “anxiety” — cryptic notations that mentioned medical recommendations.

The black doctors often left more personal notes, like “needs food, shelter, clothing, job, ‘flu shot causes you to sick,’ he got one.”

And “subject yelled at me, on the other hand, agreed to urge flu shot because I recommended it.” And “made patient laugh.”

Black men who saw white doctors wrote comments like, “It was an excellent and fast experience, a doctor was great also .” And “very informative, very appreciated.”

Those who saw black doctors wrote comments like, “The entire day made me feel very comfortable and relaxed” and “cool doctor” — comments that described an emotional response.

Bridging this racial divide may be a fraught matter, noted Dr. Skinner.

“It doesn’t seem so controversial if a lady requests a lady physician,” he said.

“If a black patient asks for a black doctor, it’s understandable, especially given this study.

But what if a white patient asks for a white doctor?”

A white doctor during this study, who asked that his name be withheld because he has black patients, said he felt his interactions with those that came to the clinic were “normal, comfortable health care visits.”

Still, he wasn't surprised to listen to the study’s results.

“Anyone getting to see a doctor is going to be nervous,” he said.

“If you face discrimination regularly in life, you'll enter a clinic with even more apprehensions.

If you see a physician who is African-American, you'll feel some relief.”

One of the black doctors who participated in the study, Dr. ChaRandle Jordan noted that low-income black patients in Oakland tend to be guarded within the doctor’s office.