Beyond Race: Deconstructing Clinical Algorithms to Personalize Patient Care

This session will discuss the historic use of race in clinical practice through various algorithms and practice guidelines, how some clinical guidelines have eliminated race and focused on other factors that influence patients’ clinical outcomes, and describe newer techniques being used to practice individualized medicine beyond the use of the social construct of race. Over the last five years, there has been concerted effort to challenge the use of race within clinical practice. As race has been established as a social construct, rather than a biological one, several systems in medicine have redesigned clinical algorithms to eliminate the use of race in determining disease management in the areas of nephrology, cardiology, and pulmonology. However, PAs need to be aware of the call for more changes within these areas, as well as within maternal-fetal health and genetic testing, and be willing to obtain more robust histories to personalize holistic care of our patients as we seek to move beyond race.