A new survey shows 55% of Black patients said they feel like they must be very careful about their appearance to be treated fairly at medical visits.

A trip to the doctor’s office comes with a bit of preparation for most, maybe even an internal pep talk to prepare for being told to get more exercise or calm a simmering fear of needles.

But dressing well in hopes of warding off unfair treatment – or even bracing for being insulted?

A newly released poll by KFF, a health policy research group, found many patients of color — including 3 in 5 Black respondents — take such steps at least some of the time when seeing a doctor.

The poll found that 55% of Black respondents said they feel like they must be very careful about their appearance to be treated fairly at medical visits. That’s similar to the rate for Hispanic and Alaska Native patients – and nearly double the rate for white patients.

  • GONADS125
    3•1 year ago

    The Tuskegee experiment did the most damage imo. So absolutely fucked up…

    Black Americans were promised free healthcare under the guise of an experiment intending to study the late stages of syphilis (which is fatal). The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood” (a common term at the time), but they were really just provided placebos while the effects of the disease were secretly recorded.

    In order to track the disease’s full progression, researchers provided no effective care as the men died, went blind or insane or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis.

    A man named Peter Buxton discovered the experiment and raised concerns over it’s ethical violations, but the review board decided to continue the experiment until all participants had perished and autopsies could be preformed. Buxton was having none of it, and leaked it to the press.

    By that time, 28 participants had perished from syphilis, 100 more had passed away from related complications, at least 40 spouses had been diagnosed with it and the disease had been passed to 19 children at birth.

    In 1973, Congress held hearings on the Tuskegee experiments, and the following year the study’s surviving participants, along with the heirs of those who died, received a $10 million out-of-court settlement. Additionally, new guidelines were issued to protect human subjects in U.S. government-funded research projects.

    This is still a very potent source of lingering distrust of the healthcare industry among Black Americans.