Reporting on race and ethnicity

One of the recent hot topics in medical research is the role of race and ethnicity in health disparities. If you look on PubMed, you will find tons of literature describing how race and ethnicity affect:
🫀 life expectancy
⚕️ access to quality medical care
💉 healthcare hesitancy
🏥 clinical trial recruitment

Many pharmaceutical companies now invest in research into healthcare disparities and approaches that can help improve them. It’s a great trend that should be commended and maintained. However, when it comes to publishing the results of research, you are walking a fine line between ✅ calling out inequality and proposing constructive solutions and ❌ perpetuating bias in medical science.

🌟 There is a way to do it right! An experienced medical writer would be able to work with the study team and the authors to ensure that the manuscript has a positive impact on the problem. 🌟

Here is how we at Parse Medical approach manuscripts that describe healthcare disparities linked to race and ethnicity:
👉 Treat race and ethnicity as a social construct
👉 Follow the reporting guidelines (you will find links to recent guidelines from JAMA, The Lancet and Nature below)
👉 Critically review the conclusions of any past research published before 2020 – even the most reputable journals published manuscript with deeply biased conclusions

If you have any useful tips or additional comments, we’d love to hear from you!

Updated JAMA Guidelines 2021. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2783090

Nature Editorial, April 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00973-7

The Lancet Group’s Guidance to authors 2024. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01081-X/abstract