Title: Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most
Headings: Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most
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Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most
Health care disparities heighten disease differences between African-Americans and white Americans.

Content: So does the environment in which people live, socioeconomic status -- and, yes, racism, says Clyde W. Yancy, MD, associate dean of clinical affairs and medical director for heart failure/transplantation at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Yancy says that all humans have the same physiology, are vulnerable to the same illnesses, and respond to the same medicines. Naturally, diseases and responses to treatment do vary from person to person. But, he says, there are unique issues that affect black Americans. Continued
"We must recognize there are some arbitrary issues that are present in the way we practice medicine and dole out health care ," Yancy tells WebMD. " It forces us to think very carefully about the very volatile issue of race and what race means. At the end of the day, all of us acknowledge that race is a very poor physiological construct. Race is a placeholder for something else. That something is less likely to be genetic. It is more likely to have to do with socioeconomics and political issues of bias as well as physiologic and genetic issues that go into that same bucket.