Socioeconomic Disparities in Pediatric Otolaryngology: Understand Our Biases While Caring for Patients

by Richard Quinn •

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

Creating Consensus

Not enough is being done to address social, economic, and cultural disparities in healthcare at the national or even regional levels, industry experts agreed. Medical education provides little or no training, and there’s a dearth of guidelines, or even best practices, for otolaryngologists.

“This is exactly an area where some kind of expert consensus statement regarding how we can address some of these biases in the clinic setting would be a great idea,” said Stacey Ishman, MD, MPH, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “We might need to look at best practices in primary care; they’ve been dealing with this at a ground level for longer than we have.”

Romaine Johnson, MD, MPH, an associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said a clinical practice guideline on equity could examine the evidence and provide best practices on the management of otolaryngology practice. “It probably would have a profound impact on the specialty,” he said. “It’s too big of a topic for just one or two authors, though. It would need a group of experts and must include non-otolaryngologists.”