SPECIAL COMMUNICATION Use of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Publication

IN A 1992 JAMA COMMENTARY, OSborne and Feit challenged journal editors to “do no harm” in publishing studies of racial differences. Invoking the Hippocratic oath, they urged authors to write about race in a way that does not perpetuate racism. Some researchers and policy analysts have argued eloquently against the use of racial/ethnic categories in biomedicine, suggesting that classifying people by race/ethnicity tacitly reinforces the racial/ethnic division of society. Others have presented compelling arguments for the continued importance of documenting health disparities. Advocates for underserved communities have stressed the need for more and better data, especially data on subpopulations that are typically aggregated into larger population groups. The current focus on documenting health disparities makes this an opportune time for careful consideration of how and why information on race/ ethnicity is collected and presented. For the discussion of disparities to be precise and meaningful, equal attention must be given to the way in which race and ethnicity are conceptualized and described and the rationale for reporting racial/ethnic differences. Journal editors have an important role to play in maintaining the quality of research and policy literature and can help establish standards for the use of race/ ethnicity that reflect thoughtful attention to these important issues. Most biomedical journals have de facto guidelines for writing about race/ethnicity, which are often imbedded in copyediting standards. However, so far only a few journals have published explicit policy statements or guidelines, including the British Medical Journal, Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, Nature Genetics, and the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. In this article, we suggest some guidelines for the use of race/ethnicity in biomedical publication. To provide the context for these guidelines, we first outline 3 challenges faced by researchers, clinicians, and policy makers in writing about race/ethnicity.