How Can We Address Diagnostic Inequities in Laboratory Practices?

   

More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Marilyn Bibbs Freeman

In this program:

How can healthcare professionals help ensure that laboratory practices address diagnostic inequities? Expert Dr. Marilyn Bibbs Freeman from Virginia Department of General Services Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services (DCLS) discusses ways that public health laboratories are working to reduce diagnostic inequities

Transcript

Interviewer:

So, Dr. Freeman, how do you ensure that your laboratory practices are fair and unbiased in serving patients from diverse backgrounds? And also, how do you collaborate with other healthcare professionals such as clinicians, pathologists, to make sure that they're addressing diagnostic inequities as well?

Dr. Marilyn Bibbs Freeman:

So that's an interesting question in the space that I occupy. So I work in a public health laboratory, so we're a little bit different than a hospital laboratory. We really don't engage medical professionals who are responsible for diagnostic care very often, we more so work with the health department. And the role of health department, of course, is to track and understand disease and then in its transmission, and then put preventive strategies in place. So our services and testing are really based on data that's created as part of programs controlled by the health department, and we are their partner, when the data indicates a health-related concern, our lab and the health department work collaboratively to educate. We also provide additional testing services if needed. We have been known to be consultants and answer questions for anyone for both the medical community, but also the lay community.

We're really proud of that relationship, and it seems to work well, because the great thing about the health department is that a lot of the health department locations in the rural areas are a resource to those people in the area. And they utilize them, and they know them. They know them by first name. They know their families, and so they're building that trust that's necessary in order to have people get buy-in for their own healthcare. So we promote that relationship, we support that relationship, and we try to push that relationship forward quite a bit. We also encourage participation in trainings that are available through our professional organization, which is the Association of Public Health Laboratories for this particular industry.

Now, there are many more but this one particularly works with public health laboratories, and we partner with them on training and providing continuing education and supporting the community and making their works visible. Helping to make their work visible increases the chance that people will come to them or to us and say, “Hey, this is what I need and this is why.” And that's what the information that we really need to have in order to be sure that our practices are fair and unbiased in serving the communities and the needs of a very diverse background. A few other things that we've done is we've partnered with schools that provide education in marginalized communities to get them interested in science and the work that we do.

Sometimes we partner with them so they can take that information back to their families and say, “Hey, look what this lab does. It's really awesome.” So this is really just an attempt at increasing the diversity of our laboratory staff, but also making sure we're making our laboratory walls more porous by being out in the community. And we encourage and support professional learning and professional disagreements in a way that we can help to learn and advocate for one another. We challenge our teams to really consider the greater good of those that we're serving. So we remain tangible, visible, and flexible, and we walk our walk, and we have made it very clear that that is not negotiable. It's very common in our laboratories to now hear our employees say, “Okay, but I don't know if that's fair to people who are younger, or I don't know if that decision is okay for people who might be in an Asian American community. Has anyone asked how the costs for these are going to be covered so that we don't pass those costs off to our customers?” We are intentionally now asking those questions, and so we're trying to live by example.

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