Assessment of biases against Latinos and African Americans among primary care providers and community members.

OBJECTIVES

We assessed implicit and explicit bias against both Latinos and African Americans among experienced primary care providers (PCPs) and community members (CMs) in the same geographic area.

METHODS

Two hundred ten PCPs and 190 CMs from 3 health care organizations in the Denver, Colorado, metropolitan area completed Implicit Association Tests and self-report measures of implicit and explicit bias, respectively.

RESULTS

With a 60% participation rate, the PCPs demonstrated substantial implicit bias against both Latinos and African Americans, but this was no different from CMs. Explicit bias was largely absent in both groups. Adjustment for background characteristics showed the PCPs had slightly weaker ethnic/racial bias than CMs.

CONCLUSIONS

This research provided the first evidence of implicit bias against Latinos in health care, as well as confirming previous findings of implicit bias against African Americans. Lack of substantive differences in bias between the experienced PCPs and CMs suggested a wider societal problem. At the same time, the wide range of implicit bias suggested that bias in health care is neither uniform nor inevitable, and important lessons might be learned from providers who do not exhibit bias.