Dr Junko Takeshita discusses what dermatologists should do to help overcome disparities in care among racial and ethnic minority groups for patients with psoriasis and other dermatologic diseases.
She is an assistant professor in the departments of dermatology and epidemiology, biostatistics and informatics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
Transcript:
Dr Takeshita: This is an area that is of great interest to me, particularly from a research standpoint and is really the focus of my personal research program. I study health and health care disparities related to chronic inflammatory skin diseases, and a large part of that focus has been psoriasis for me. We are aware of racial and ethnic disparities in access to medical care for psoriasis in general, as well as dermatologic care. I had previously mentioned some potential disparities in disease burden, by race and ethnicity as well. It's important that, as dermatologists, we are aware of these disparities.
We also have emerging data that support that practicing dermatologists are not as comfortable diagnosing psoriasis in darker skin types. This can lead to underdiagnosis, missed diagnoses, later diagnoses.
This is supported by some data out of UCSF, looking at their own clinic data, that suggests that particularly Asians and Hispanics, when they present to the clinics at UCSF, have more severe disease. I think the first step is recognizing that these disparities exist with regards to access to care, with regards to diagnosis. There are also suggested disparities in treatment.
Our group and others have shown that particularly black individuals with psoriasis are less likely to receive biologic therapy for their disease compared to their white counterparts. We, as providers, need to be cognizant of how we are educating our patients about their disease.
Make sure that we feel comfortable diagnosing, not only psoriasis, but all kinds of skin diseases in different skin types and across a diverse population. We need to make sure that we are also training the next generation to be comfortable diagnosing and treating skin disease, including psoriasis, across a diverse population.
We also need to make sure that we are proving equitable care across our patient population. Making sure that all of our patients have equal access, and that we are also similarly counseling and offering treatments in an equitable way to our patients.
