More study needs to go into minority health issues, rather than simply comparing their health experiences with the white community. There can also be negative connotations held toward some ailments, such as AIDS, which has been called the "gay" disease, which stigmatizes all those who contract the disease. Biases such as these can often affect the outcome of a study or even bias the researchers, even if they do not realize it. Thus, truly defining "whiteness" and who is actually white can affect the outcomes of studies in the future, and can help keep bias from entering into health care studies.

Another interesting statistic is that the United States is the only nation in the West who does not report health information by class. This indicates that many Americans do not feel there are distinct classes in American society, but most sociologists believe there are, and so, health data reported simply by race is skewed. We know that there is a disparity between black and white life expectancy, for example, but do not know what class (such as income, work, or education) have to do with this disparity.

There is a tendency to treat race and class as the same thing, and attribute racial differences in health care to biological differences between blacks and whites. In the 1850s, for example, many people believed blacks were inferior to whites in just about all areas. This idea is antiquated now. The ideas many of...

There is so much importance placed on race and race-specific health tendencies that some scientists see developing specific drugs to treat specific races in the future. This may be one of the most contentious and ill-advised uses of race health care studies. While there are many variances in health care between the races in the U.S. choosing health care as a result of the future is one health care innovation that may have to overcome a tide of public disapproval in order to gain acceptance.
References

Bach, P.B. et. al. "Primary Care Physicians who Treat Blacks and Whites." New England Journal of Medicine. 2004; 351:6. 575-583.

Cooper, Richard S. Kaufman, Jay S. And Ward, Pyle. "Race and Genomics." New England Journal of Medicine. 2003, 348:12. 1166-1175.

Daniels, Jessie and Schulz, Amy J. "Constructing Whiteness in health Disparities Research." Gender, Race, Class, and Health. 89-119.

Kawachi, Ichiro, Daniels, Norman, and Robinson, Dean E. "Health Disparities by Race and Class: Why Both Matter." Health Affairs. Vol. 24 Num.2. 341-352.