Translating Social Psychology for Addressing Implicit Bias in Health Care

Abstract

Reseach indicates that healthcare providers' interpersonal biases toward marginalized patients are linked to poorer clinical judgments, strained interactions, and worse health outcomes. These biases often lead patients to disengage from care, including avoiding future visits to the same providers or clinics, and possibly seek fewer effective alternatives for treating disease. In this paper, we use the clinical and translational science (CTS) framework to review the translational work we have done on implicit bias in health care in three domains: Documenting the implicit nature of the biases that different health care providers hold toward various marginalized patient groups, examining the associations between provider bias and interactions with marginalized patients and their outcomes, and developing and testing the effectiveness of workshops that teach providers about bias and bias reduction strategies they can use when they interact with marginalized patients.