Removing race adjustment from lung test could mean higher disability payments for Black vets

STAT May 19, 2024
Usha Lee McFarling

Removing a patient’s race from an equation used to assess lung function — a change called for by health equity advocates — would mean that the lung disease of nearly half a million Black Americans would be reclassified as being more severe, and that Black veterans could receive more than $1 billion in additional disability payments, according to a study published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The issue of how race is used in clinical algorithms has become a topic of widespread discussion, and controversy, in recent years, and the American Thoracic Society is among many medical societies that have been grappling with the issue. Last year it said that a racial correction may contribute to health...

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