A study recently published in JAMA Cardiology adds to a growing body of evidence questioning the use of race in medical decision-making. Currently, doctors use cardiovascular risk assessments that include personal health information, gender and race to gauge how likely a person is to develop heart disease. The risk score can then guide lifestyle changes and medications to prevent disease.
“The major takeaway is we need to rethink the idea of race in cardiovascular risk prediction,” said lead author Dr. Arnab Ghosh, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and a hospitalist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “We need to start thinking about race as a social construct that affects people over the course of their lives, not a biological construct.”