Do implicit bias trainings on race improve health care? Not yet – but incorporating the latest science can help hospitals treat all patients equitably

There is increasing evidence that implicit bias – non-conscious attitudes toward specific groups – is a source of racial inequities in certain aspects of health care, and lawmakers are taking note.

Since the tragic murder of George Floyd in May 2020, wherein a Black man was killed by police, several U.S. federal and state legislators have introduced proposals declaring racism as a public health crisis. In March 2024, four U.S. senators led a resolution calling out the “implicit racial and ethnic biases within the health care system, which have an explicit impact on the quality…