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Race, Ethnicity, and Pain Treatment: Striving to Understand the Causes and Solutions to the Disparities in Pain Treatment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Vence L. Bonham
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Extract

would like for them to know that I am in pain or this part of my body hurts or the other part hurts — that I am not lying about it. To examine me and to cut down on the pain….And help me out.

Patient with Sickle Cell Disease, Focus Group Participant

Pain in the United States is widely recognized to be undertreated; however, the capacity to treat pain has never been greater. The causes of this undertreatment are varied. As we focus on pain and why it is too often ineffectively treated, we also discover that this undertreatment afflicts some more than others. What divides the some from the others isn't limited to one factor, but one particularly disturbing factor is race and ethnicity. Racial and ethnic minority populations are at higher risk for oligoanalgesia, or the ineffective treatment of pain. Only through further study of the differences in pain treatment based on race and ethnicity can we develop strategies to reduce the disparities in care.

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Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , Spring 2001 , pp. 52 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2001

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References

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