Biosketch:
Somnath Saha is Associate Professor of Medicine, Public Health & Preventive
Medicine, and Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology at the Oregon
Health & Science University (OHSU), and is a staff physician at the
Portland VA Medical Center. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from
Stanford University and received his medical degree and post-graduate
training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
He was a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at
the University of Washington, where he obtained a masters degree in public
health.
Dr. Saha's
research focuses on the influence of race and ethnicity in the patient-physician
relationship, and its relation to racial disparities in the quality
of health care. His current work employs the principles of community-based
participatory research and involves both quantitative and qualitative
research methods. He is a member of the Oregon Evidence-based Practice
Center, where he has conducted technology assessments and syntheses
of evidence on cost-effectiveness. He serves on the Oregon Health Services
Commission, a group charged with prioritizing health services to enable
the creation of a rational and cost-effective benefits package for Medicaid
beneficiaries. He also serves on the National Advisory Committee for
the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program.
Abstract:
The quality and quantity of health care delivered in the U.S. are generally
lower for racial and ethnic minority populations than for the white majority.
Many of these disparities are not explained by patients' ability to pay
for care, or other socioeconomic factors. Racial and cultural barriers
between minority patients and their predominantly non-minority physicians
are often invoked as important contributors to racial disparities. In
response, health professional organizations have sponsored, recommended,
and mandated training in "cultural competence," i.e., the knowledge,
attitudes, and skills needed to effectively care for diverse patient populations.
There is scant evidence, however, to guide these training programs, which
consequently vary widely in content and format. In this presentation,
I will review an agenda of completed, ongoing, and future research that
aims to understand the influence of race in patient-physician relationships
and the role of that influence in explaining racial disparities in health
care. The goal of this research is to develop an evidence base upon which
to build effective programs to reduce the impact of race on quality of
care.
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