A medical student at the University of Kansas discusses a research project she started in her first year of school—2020—looking at whether a racial bias in pulse oximetry was present in patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure.
Julia Balmaceda began her medical education at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2020. In this interview, she describes the backdrop for the abstract that was published at CHEST 2022 that looked at the direct arterial blood gas and pulse oximeter readings of White and Black patients experiencing acute hypoxemic respiratory failure in the intensive care unit.
Transcript
What prompted you and your co-authors to do this study?
So as a med student, we’re allowed to do some research. And at the time, when I started this, it was my first year of medical school, so that would have been in 2020. And during that time, obviously, it was very tumultuous for the entire country. COVID-19 was going on, you know, the tragedies of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had occurred. And so, it was really striking home with a lot of us in the health care system. You know, we're definitely not isolated from things that are going on socially in the country. So, as a med student, I had to ask myself, what can I do? And one of the things that we could do is do research.
So, I decided to really focus my research on health care disparities. Part of our med school curriculum is talking about the historical and structural racism that occurs in health care. And we learned about racism that's built into things like osteoporosis risk calculations and things like that. And so pulse oximetry, it's not like a new discovery that there's a race-based bias built into it. But honestly, it was mainly me trying to see what's going on at the institution that I'm going to school at...to see what was happening in the [intensive care unit] here at KU. So that's kind of where it stemmed in. And looking at the results now, we see that we reproduced something that other institutions have seen. And thankfully, we have, I think, a larger data set that we're going to look at, and hopefully that'll help us elucidate some of the more practical implications of what this bias is.
CMS' 340B Repayment Proposal May Harm Vulnerable Hospitals, Reward Those With Higher Revenues
April 26th 2024The 340B hospitals not receiving an offsetting lump-sum payment from CMS following 2018-2022 cuts later ruled unlawful are disproportionately rural, publicly owned, and nonacademic, according to a new study.
Read More
Examining Low-Value Cancer Care Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
April 25th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the April 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on the rates of low-value cancer care services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen
Empowering Community Health Through Wellness and Faith
April 23rd 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are bringing you a special month-long podcast series with our Strategic Alliance Partner, UPMC Health Plan. In the third episode, Camille Clarke-Smith, EdD, MS, CHES, CPT, discusses approaching community health holistically through spiritual and community engagement.
Listen
Mental Health Diagnoses, Care Challenges Rise Among US Youth, Report Finds
April 26th 2024While behavioral health care utilization has been rising, the treatment landscape has been worsening. New findings show that 20% of youths did not receive any form of treatment within 3 months of their initial behavioral health diagnosis.
Read More