Do BIPOC patients have the same treatment experience as white patients?

Join Michelle Henry, MD as she examines the disparities and inequities in healthcare experienced by BIPOC patients compared to white patients.

Transcript

00:00

Hey, Dr. Henry. Do Black and Brown psoriasis patients have the same experience in finding treatment as white patients?

00:06

[MUSIC PLAYING] That's a great question. We actually do see a difference.

00:13

With regard to specifically biologic treatments, when we're looking at white patients and patients of color. We know that biologics are really

00:20

great, very effective treatments for moderate-to-severe psoriasis. However, patients that are Black,

00:27

especially Medicare patients, are 69% less likely to have biologic treatments. We believe a part of this might be a lack of familiarity

00:35

with the drug. We know that Black patients are uniquely unfamiliar with biologic treatments, and so this is part of why education is so critically

00:43

important to reduce the burden of this disease. If biologics are so effective, why

00:49

aren't Black and Brown patients being educated about them? Researchers have wondered the same thing. One group looked at direct-to-consumer TV ads,

00:56

and what they found was that 92.6% of the main characters in those ads are white. Pharmaceutical ads are one of the main ways that patients

01:06

learn about products and learn about a lot of these treatments. And for a lot of patients of color, if they're not seeing patients that look like them in the ads,

01:13

they may assume that those treatments are not for them. So what about beyond biologics?

01:20

Are there still more differences? So we also know that patients of color are not seeking treatment as frequently as white patients.

01:28

So if you're looking at white patients with psoriasis, about 50.8% of those patients will seek treatment with a dermatologist.

01:34

However, one study looked at what they termed non-Hispanic minorities, and those included Black patients, Asian patients,

01:41

and Pacific Islanders. And what they saw was that only 38.3% of those patients were actually seeking treatment.

01:47

And so that makes us wonder, why aren't these patients seeking treatment? And so it might be that when they see a dermatologist, they're not getting the right diagnosis,

01:54

and, therefore, they're not getting the treatments that we need. When we talk to dermatologists, a lot of dermatologists say that they do not feel as comfortable diagnosing

02:03

psoriasis in patients of color. And so if they're not able to give this diagnosis, then those patients are not going to get the treatment.

02:10

What's important about this information is that it gives us some solutions. It gives us some direction. So a really great way to help to reduce

02:16

the burden of this disease is to focus on educating those Black patients about biologics and also educating all dermatologists

02:23

about the presentation of psoriasis in a wide range of skin tones, skin types, and skin colors. [AUDIO LOGO]