Parker H
Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Leicester, UK.
J Health Serv Res Policy. 1997 Oct;2(4):256-9. doi: 10.1177/135581969700200411.
Racism can affect health by making people ill, exacerbating existing illness, and by inequality in access to and utilisation of health services. Recent British publications assessing the methods used in studies of ethnicity primarily considered the status of the variables 'ethnicity' and 'race' and advised on the use of appropriate categories. Such scrutiny of ethnicity research is welcomed, yet authors rarely emphasise the importance of racism as a variable. This paper discusses why racism matters as a variable and poses suggestions for its absence from British health services research. Reference is made to US research to demonstrate that this focus is important and feasible. Health services research that considers ethnicity and excludes the effect of racism may result, at best, in an incomplete understanding. At worst, this omission could itself be perceived as a racist practice.
种族主义会通过使人患病、加重现有疾病以及在获得和利用医疗服务方面的不平等来影响健康。最近英国评估种族研究中所使用方法的出版物主要考虑了“种族”和“人种”变量的状况，并就使用适当的类别提出了建议。对种族研究的这种审查是值得欢迎的，然而作者们很少强调种族主义作为一个变量的重要性。本文讨论了为什么种族主义作为一个变量很重要，并对其在英国医疗服务研究中的缺失提出了建议。文中引用了美国的研究来证明这种关注是重要且可行的。考虑种族因素却排除种族主义影响的医疗服务研究，充其量可能导致理解不完整。最糟糕的是，这种疏忽本身可能被视为一种种族主义行为。
