National Kidney Foundation

Racial Bias Uncovered in Kidney Transplantation System: Thousands of Black Patients Prioritized After Years of Waiting

“Not everyone approaches medicine with a health equity lens. Many clinicians are not aware of existing disparities — how Black patients do not get referred to nephrology as early as white patients and do not have sufficient access to transplant ,” said Dr. Nwamaka Eneanya, an assistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. “In medicine, the tendency is to say, ‘This is what a study showed, so this is what we should do,’ focusing on biomarkers and statistical tests without examining issues of ethics or health equity.”