The Effects of Race, Social Class Bias and Other Selected Socio-Demographic Variables on Awareness of Health Disparities: Exploring Medical School Students' View

Numerous studies confirm that -- despite the progress that has occurred in other aspects of health -- racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States are pervasive and pose major public health, health care and health policy challenges that, to date, have not been completely surmounted. Through the existing body of research, several factors have been identified as determinants of racial and ethnic health disparities. Among these factors are levels of awareness about health disparities, and biases against African Americans and other socially disadvantaged groups, such as the poor.;There is a paucity of research investigating the relationship between race, the presence of explicit and implicit bias among medical school students -- the very individuals who will become medical doctors in the future -- and their levels of awareness about health disparities. Further, of the studies that do exist, most failed to include significant numbers of African-American medical school students and thus failed to investigate both inter- and intraracial variations in explicit bias, implicit race and social class bias, and awareness about health disparities among White and non-White medical school students. Additionally, no study to date seeks to investigate the predictive relationship between these and other socio-demographic variables -- such as family socioeconomic status or gender -- and levels of awareness about health disparities, leaving the following question unanswered: to what extent -- if any -- does race, bias, and other socio-demographic variables serve as predictors of levels of awareness about health disparities?;This exploratory research examined this question by investigating the relationship between race, implicit race and social class biases, and levels of awareness about health disparities. This study also explored whether explicit bias -- as measured by an index created from the questionnaire used in the research -- and other socio-demographic variables (such as type of medical school attended, gender or age) served as statistically significant predictors of levels of awareness about health disparities.;This research study found that there is a statistically significant relationship between race and levels of awareness about health disparities (p=.008), such that African-American medical school students had higher levels of awareness about health disparities than non-African American medical school students. This study also found a statistically significant inverse relationship between the type of medical school attended and explicit bias (p=.004), such that students at non-predominantly White medical schools reported higher levels of explicit bias than those at predominantly-White medical schools. Further, results from several exploratory multiple regression analyses revealed that race and family socioeconomic status -- more so than any other socio-demographic variable in this study -- served as statistically significant predictors (p<.05) of levels of awareness about health disparities.