UArizona research shows people of color receive less care in emergency rooms

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — A recent study led by researchers in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona found racial and ethnic differences in the way patients are treated in U.S. emergency rooms.

This study took two years. The researchers examined 33 million visits to around 1,000 emergency departments throughout the U.S. looking into the racial and ethnic differences that patients face when walking through emergency room doors.

“The emergency care provider said, which one do you want me to address? The arm or the alcohol use disorder?” said James Cunningham, Professor at UArizona.

They found that both white people and people of color with alcohol use disorder usually have similar statistics when it comes to suicide ideation, but with their findings they say people of color receive less suicide prevention care when visiting emergency departments.

“People are constantly talking about the number of deaths from suicide and how that's increasing. We really need to think about what can we do up front in terms of prevention to help lessen that,” said Cunningham.

Professor Cuningham explains that the researchers found that about 9% of visits by white people received a suicide ideation diagnosis— Only 7% of visits by Black people were diagnosed and only 5% of Latinos and American Indian/Alaska Native people were diagnosed.

The study notes the reasons for fewer suicide ideation diagnoses among people of color are complex but could include things like stereotyping biases, lack of cultural familiarity, not talking about suicidal thoughts because of language barriers and even a lack of trust in the medical care system.

Cunningham and his team say they weren’t too shocked about these results. They hope their research brings attention to the problem and encourages people of color to advocate for their health while also having more programs and services readily available to help them with that.

The next step in the research is individualizing regions and states to see which areas see less care than others.