A kidney function test that used race in its calculation caused thousands of Black patients to be denied kidney transplants, but hospitals are now working to fix this unfair practice.
Jazmin Evans, a 29-year-old from Philadelphia, recently found out she should have been placed on the kidney transplant waiting list back in 2015 instead of 2019 because of this biased test. Over 14,000 other Black kidney patients have also had their waiting times adjusted, moving them up the priority list.
The problem stems from a widely used test that made Black patients’ kidneys seem healthier than they really were by using a race-based math formula. Dr. Martha Pavlakis, a kidney specialist, says the effort to correct this is “an attempt to make things right.”
Black Americans are over three times more likely to have kidney failure compared to white people, but they make up only about 30% of the roughly 89,000 people currently waiting for a kidney transplant.
Doctors are working to remove race from the kidney function calculation altogether. In the meantime, hospitals are fixing waiting times for Black patients to address the unfair results caused by the biased test and rebuild trust in the healthcare system.
See “A biased test kept thousands of Black people from getting a kidney transplant. It’s finally changing”
by Lauran Neergaard on the AP News website (April 1, 2024)
