VIDEO: Impact of structural racism, personal bias in health care on psoriatic arthritis

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

So I think the biggest element that comes out of clinical trials is just the absence of representation of certain populations. Also lack of epidemiological data in certain groups, in African Americans we have no data, and there's kind of an assumption that there's no disease, but maybe we shouldn't assume this. And then I think the elephant in the room is access to care and discrepancies that we've seen in other health conditions, I think all those expand across the spectrum. And are definitely present in psoriatic disease as well.

Dr. Orbai, absolutely. I think the other thing to remember and recall is that in our training, we've not had enough education regarding how skin lesions can look different on different skin color. And I know that now American College of Rheumatology is really focusing on this part of it, and now we are creating more education slides for our trainees so that they can see how psoriasis can look on different skin colors. I think, I can tell you from my own example I still remember I was a fellow in rheumatology, and there was someone that I knew who showed me, had some joint pains and had some skin lesions. And I never could have imagined that, that was psoriasis but there was another dermatologist who was well aware of how psoriasis looked on darker skin color, and actually was the one who diagnosed this person with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. So I think that is another element of the recognition on our part that the skin disease can look different in people of color is a critical element of taking care of these patients and making the right diagnosis.

Thank you, Dr. Haques for mentioning that, I think that's very very important, and I'm so glad to hear that there are efforts within the ACR to try to fill this gap for trainees and for us.

[Dr. Haques] Yes.