Ethnic groups Race/ethnicity

Assumptions and Stereotypes. One explanation for disparities in care relates to the assumptions held by health providers about racial and ethnic groups. Race-based health research and practice reveal a series of dubious assumptions and negative profiles of African American and other patients of color that lead to inferior medical treatment. Medicine sometimes attaches characteristics to particular racial and ethnic groups, and physicians... 

In view of the different manifestations of psychopathological behaviors found in diverse groups that cannot be adequately accounted for by factors concerning race, ethnic group or the acculturation process, Agbayani-Siewert et al. (1999) put forward a model that allows direct examination of the impact of cultural factors on psychopathological manifestations, while continuing to include structural social factors. 

Lin, K.M. (2001b). Biological differences in depression and anxiety across races and ethnic groups, /. Clin. Psychiatry, 62 (13), 13-19. 

Racial/ethnic group membership was expected to be an important factor in an individual s level of trust of these institutions. Controlling for gender, age, education, and income, African Americans were about 40% less likely than whites to trust universities Asians and Hispanics were nearly twice as likely as whites to trust the federal government. However, race/ethnicity was not a factor in trust in the pharmaceutical industry nor in trust in health organizations. 

The terms race, ethnicity, and minority are also used in this chapter. Race refers to a group that is socially defined on the basis of physical characteristics. Ethnicity refers to a shared culture and lifestyle, especially as reflected in language, folkways, religious and other institutional forms, material culture such as clothing and food, and cultural products such as music, literature, and art. Finally, the term minority group refers to a part of a population differing from others in some characteristics, which often subject them to differential treatment (Byrd and Clayton, 2002 Van de Berghe, 1967). 

The health care needs of racial and ethnic groups are similar in virtually all respects, but in some cases diseases or drug responsiveness based on genotypic variation may correlate with race or ethnicity. Knowing that those variations exist, when to test for them, and when to take them into account in clinical decisions will require research directed at uncovering genotypic differences that correlate with race or ethnicity. 

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