The December issue of the Journal of Black Innovation found that leading research data bases dramatically underrepresent the health research of historically Black college and university faculty and students.
The annual Dr. T. Nathaniel Burbridge Center for Inclusive Innovation bibliography on current research in Black health inadvertently discovered a major flaw on a query about “African-American patient experience.”
Just 112 citations came up from the PubMed resource of the National Institute of Medicine, and five from Johns Hopkins Press but 313 from the Meharry Medical College Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, published since 1990, and 508 from the Journal of the National Medical Association, now in its 115th year.
John William Templeton, Journal publisher, said, “This helps explain why a century and a half after Dr. Daniel Hale Williams pioneered open heart surgery only 0.7% of federal research and development goes to historically Black colleges and universities.”
This bias against African-American researchers is particularly troublesome given the rapid adoption of “artificial intelligence” tools in health care, which often rely on research data bases to create patient profiles.
“A better initial for artificial intelligence than AI is AB for accelerated bias,” notes Templeton, author of a history of federal health care policy and African-Americans for UC-San Francisco’s Repair program.
Policy implications include the sharp decline in African-American Medicaid participants in many states during the past six months, although a coalition of civil rights groups has found that most are qualified.
“Decisionmakers and their staffs are flying blind about the health of African-Americans,” added Templeton.
The issue also includes the 450 Top Black Serving Hospitals for Medicare patients and the BlackBio100 in preparation for Innovation&Equity23: 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology on Jan. 15 in San Francisco.
“Protecting Our Civil Rights With and From Technology” is the theme of the annual scientific proceeding of the Journal of Black Innovation.
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