An examination of the role and function of race in healthcare

Abstract

This paper examines the role and function of race in healthcare. The involvement of race in healthcare is a heavily debated and controversial topic. The social constructivist paradigm and ambiguity of race have led some philosophers and medical researchers to argue for racial eliminativism in healthcare – the argument that race should be entirely removed from the domain of healthcare. On the contrary, others have argued that race has an important utility in healthcare and as such, should not be eliminated. The aim of this paper is to determine the usefulness of race in healthcare, and whether racial eliminativism should be adopted. The examination of the function of race in this paper is two-fold. (1) An examination of racial categories in epidemiology, and (2) An examination of the usage of race amongst medical practitioners. This paper aims to show that there is some important utility of race in healthcare especially in addressing health disparities and as an effective, but not sole surrogate for unmeasured environmental factors.