Race and Ethnicity: Vital constructs for diabetes research

Abstract

Medical researchers are now paying increasing attention to findings of racial or ethnic (“racial/ethnic” hereafter) differences in quality and access to care, health outcomes, risk factors, genetic markers, and therapeutic response. However, this attention has been met with growing controversy and debate. Society’s history of discrimination, racism and eugenics, and continued disparities in access and quality of care make this a particularly sensitive issue. In the past year, the New England Journal of Medicine (1– 4) and the International Journal of Epidemiology (5,6) have published several commentaries and editorials, some criticizing and others arguing in favor of the use of race/ethnicity in medical research. The editorial board of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine recently instructed submitting authors not to detail race/ethnic variation in disease or risk factors unless there is proof of the biologic, scientific, or sociologic bases for these differences