Missing the forest for the trees: Is focusing on cultural competence undermining the elimination of health disparities?

Abstract

Data suggests that the millions of dollars and hours spent on attacking racial and other health disparities have yielded very little progress. For those of us hell-bent on reducing and eliminating disparities in care, this is rough to hear. My own work and interest in implicit bias and unconscious stereotyping (Project Implicit offers information on this topic as well as Implicit Association Tests) has led me to see social determinants and implicit bias as the two missing links in the health disparities puzzle. Ironically, these seem to be the two pieces most commonly left out when conceptualizing how health...