FIX EXCLUSIVES
Key Takeaways
- University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing promotes the theory that racial minorities achieve better health outcomes when treated by medical professionals of the same race, following the release of a study calling for increased racial diversity in nursing.
- The medical watchdog group Do No Harm argues the premise of racial concordance is ideologically driven and unsupported by evidence, stating that existing research does not demonstrate that such concordance actually improves health outcomes.
- Do No Harm argues that Penn Nursing's study is flawed and constitutes a smear against white nurses, suggesting that it falsely implies they provide inferior care to minority patients.
The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing is under fire from a medical watchdog group for promoting the “debunked” theory that racial minorities have better health outcomes when treated by medical professionals of the same race.
Penn Nursing recently released an announcement advertising a study titled “Racial Concordance of Black Nurses and Patients Across Hospitals.”
“The study emphasizes the urgent need for healthcare institutions and policymakers to prioritize diversifying the nursing workforce to better reflect patient demographics, which is crucial for addressing health inequities,” the announcement reads.
Nursing Professor Eileen Lake, who led the study, said in the announcement that her “findings highlight a critical gap in structural competency within healthcare institutions.”
“Despite Black patients often receiving care in hospitals with more Black nurses, the existing nursing workforce lacks sufficient diversity, especially in settings where racial concordance could be most beneficial,” she said.
However, Do No Harm Senior Director of Programs Laura Morgan told The College Fix that this study is “ideologically driven.”
“Institutions promoting the concept of racial concordance have done so because ideologically driven groups and individuals have perpetuated the notion that non-white patients will have better outcomes if they are treated by non-white doctors,” Morgan said.
She added that Penn Nursing and its Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research have ample resources to focus on training skilled, compassionate nurses with strong clinical foundations, rather than promoting “debunked ideologies.”
In response to the study, Do No Harm recently released a statement refuting its findings.
“Do No Harm’s December 2023 report on this issue examined the literature on racial concordance and highlighted the fact that four out of five systematic reviews found no evidence to support the claim that racial concordance produces positive health outcomes,” the group’s statement reads.
Additionally, Do No Harm noted that Penn’s study links its endorsement of racially concordant care to the concept of “structural competency,” which it defines as the ability of healthcare institutions to recognize and address social, political, and economic factors affecting health. It argues that hiring a “structurally fluent” and diverse workforce demonstrates this competency.
However, this reasoning rests on the flawed theory of “social determinants of health,” which states that factors like income, education, and housing drive health outcomes, the group stated.
“SDOH literature is dominated by sloppily designed observational studies that do not seriously attempt to disentangle causation from correlation or to control for obvious sources of bias,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Chris Pope said.
Do No Harm also argued that Penn Nursing’s study was a “smear of hardworking healthcare professionals.”
“[I]mplicit in the study’s premise is the claim that white nurses can’t provide the same level of care to black patients as black nurses,” the group stated.
The Fix reached out to Penn Nursing and Professor Eileen Lake via multiple emails for comments on the study and Do No Harm’s statement. Neither responded.
Penn Nursing isn’t the only school to promote the idea of racial concordance.
Earlier this year, the University of California Los Angeles promoted a study by its researchers claiming that “clinical outcomes improve when patients and surgeons share the same ethnicity.”
“Data revealed reduced hospital stays and readmissions when Hispanic patients were treated by Hispanic surgeons,” the news release states.
Furthermore, another Do No Harm review found that a flawed study claiming black newborn babies perform better when cared for by black doctors has been cited nearly 800 times in medical literature, The College Fix previously reported.
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