wish you were here
Summit highlights, from Medicare to crosswords
- Being in the room for a STAT summit is an entirely different experience than seeing it virtually. Cerevel Therapeutics chairman Tony Coles told the room about his work with the Black Economic Alliance: "This is a very high-profile elected official who said, 'Tony, I would really want to support the organization, but it has 'Black' in it. And as a result of that, I can't be seen as supporting anything that has the word 'Black' in it.' That's a direct quote." All of our breaths were taken away for a second.
- Former CMS administrator Don Berwick had a spicy talk with Bob Herman about the future of Medicare. Here's one of his takes on the "medical loss ratio" and how people from other countries are incredulous when they hear about how we do health insurance in this country.
Another Don quote that we at STAT loved was this one: "I have to say that's STAT's been a real treasure nationally, one of the journalist organizations that's able to actually help people understand what's nearly not understandable." - We don't have a STAT Summit bingo card, but the fact that it took until the second day for GLP-1s to be mentioned made me think we should! We did, however, have a fun STAT newspaper. It was a print-only special, but you can find the crossword here if you like!
health care
Asian Americans in health care aren't a monolith
After traveling to both Tokyo and Hong Kong on the same trip last year, I was struck by how shockingly different these two cultures were, even though they're both East Asian countries. But in the U.S., people from both backgrounds would be categorized under the generic label of "Asian American."
A new study in JAMA Network Open breaks down the Asian American category into 40 ethnoracial subgroups to investigate who is doing what jobs in U.S. healthcare. The results show that the overarching category hides inequities among different populations that the authors say go back to historical imperialism, colorism, and other injustices that have resulted in socioeconomic disparities.
While Indian and Chinese Americans comprise the largest proportion of Asian-American physicians, Cambodian and Hmong Americans are largely underrepresented. Filipinx Americans make up more than half of Asian American nurses and nursing assistants, and Bangladeshi and Chinese Americans made up the largest proportions of home health aides. Overall, Asian Americans represented an estimated 22% of physicians, 10% of RNs, and 8.3% of home health aides.
For more on how the Asian American label hides health disparities, read this award-winning piece from my colleague Usha Lee McFarling.
Sarah Gonzales for STAT
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