The Urban Institute study found 7 in 10 parents who alleged mistreatment were more likely to delay care after those encounters.
A disproportionate number of Black parents believe they receive discriminatory medical care because of the color of their skin.
An Urban Institute report released this week, using June data from the nonprofit’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey, found that about 22% of Black parents said they had experienced unfair judgment or mistreatment because of their skin color or ethnicity, language, health insurance status, weight, income, or disability, CNN reported.
Black parents reported mistreatment at a rate almost 10% greater than parents who are white, Hispanic, or who identify as members of other racial groups.
Dulce Gonzalez, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute and study co-author, said these experiences disproportionately impact parents of color, especially Black parents, and their children.
“So understanding and interrupting these experiences of under-treatment and health care could be an important step towards helping to close a lot of the racial and ethnic health inequities that we see,” Gonzalez added, CNN reported.
The survey was conducted online among a nationally representative sample of 9,494 Americans ages 18 to 64. The analysis, however, was based on responses from 2,981 parents with children under 19.
Black parents frequently cited their race, ethnicity, country of origin and first language as the causes of their perceived unjust treatment.
Gonzalez asserted that unfair treatment could severely impact patients’ health, increase their stress levels, and make them more skeptical of the health care system, which could lead them to skip critical treatments.
The survey found 7 in 10 parents who alleged mistreatment were more likely to put off therapies after those encounters.
“There’s going to be a lot of changes that are needed on multiple fronts that address … not only sort-of implicit and explicit biases that providers and their staff could hold towards people of color,” Gonzalez noted, “but also just broader changes in how we’re delivering health care.”
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