AMA adopts guidelines that address inequities in medicine

Key takeaways:

• AMA members voted to adopt guidelines addressing discrimination and inequities in medicine.
• The guidelines indicate that physicians should cultivate self-awareness, avoid stigmatizing language and more.

At the annual meeting of the AMA House of Delegates, members voted to adopt guidelines addressing systemic discrimination and inequities in medicine.

In its action, the AMA urged the medical community to address inequity and discrimination at the institutional level, according to a press release, by exploring how practices and policies of health care institutions shape patients’ experience of care, illness and health.

“Neither individual physicians nor health care institutions can entirely resolve the problems of discrimination and inequity that underlie health disparities, but they can and must accept responsibility to be agents for change,” AMA Board Member David H. Aizuss, MD, said in the release.

The guidelines indicate that physicians should:

• cultivate self-awareness;
• create strategies for change;
• participate in supporting and designing strategies for change to ensure equitable care;
• support others in creating opportunities for critical reflection across the institution;
• avoid using language that stigmatizes or demeans patients; and
• use social history to gather information about other, nonmedical factors that impact patient health and access to care to better inform their relationships with patients and the care they provide.

“To make meaningful progress in achieving equitable care, physicians must recognize how the pathologies of social systems impact their patients’ lives,” Aizuss said.

For hospitals and other health care institutions, the guidelines recommend helping stakeholders understand the histories of the various communities they serve; engaging stakeholders in recognizing local drivers of inequities in health and health care; identifying opportunities and adopting strategies to “leverage their status within the community” to reduce living conditions contributing to adverse health outcomes; and supporting efforts within the institution to change institutional practices and policies that may create or perpetuate barriers to equitable care.

“The commitment to serve patients in need means that we have an obligation to examine prevailing attitudes, habits, policies and practices that determine what care is available to who and to take steps to remove or re-engineer obstacles that undermine the ability to ensure equitable care for all,” Aizuss said.