Re-Segregating Healthcare: Finding the Flaws in a Famous – and Dangerous – Study

The Oakland study is not a landmark paper that proves the United States must train more Black physicians to achieve better health outcomes for Black patients, much less push patients to rely primarily or solely on physicians of their own race or gender. Rather, it is an unproven and unpersuasive effort to convince policymakers of a dubious plan to make racial concordance a reality in American healthcare — which in essence means a return to racial segregation of medical care. The Oakland study should have been challenged by an army of researchers — people who typically demand rigor in design and interpretation before they accept studies as definitive. Instead, it was treated with broad and unthinking acceptance. The mounting campaign for a 21^st century segregation of healthcare is dangerous and baseless. As this report shows, the Oakland study does not change that fact.