Efforts to meet the demand for organs have long had disproportionate effects on members of particular races, not only because of disparate levels of need for transplants but because of the way our donation system works.
Reducing racial disparities in pain treatment requires an interdisciplinary approach to identifying causes of racial biases and teaching health care professionals to recognize and reduce them.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):221-228. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.medu1-1503.
Concerns about the deleterious effects of stress on the mind and body have led to the beginnings of a stress vaccine, an injection that will reduce these effects.
Maureen Kelley, PhD discusses the dual-use dilemma in infectious disease research. The same scientific information or products intended for good can also fall into the wrong hands and be used to threaten a population in an act of bioterrorism.
Mary Terrell White, PhD and Katherine L. Cauley, PhD
Students who take international electives must be sensitive to the impact of their presence and to possible risks to patients' safety and their own, and must ask whether their motives for going abroad are overly self-serving.
Increased awareness and improvement in access are needed in order to alleviate the racial disparities that exist with regard to the underutilization of hospice care by African Americans and other ethnic populations.