Examining Implicit Racial Attitudes among College Students in Hawai'i, a Project of the Hawai'i Implicit Bias Initiative.

For the past 2 decades, investigations into implicit racial bias have increased, building evidence on the impact of bias on health and health care for many minority communities in the US. However, few studies examine the presence and impacts of implicit bias in Hawai'i, a context distinct in its history, racial/ethnic diversity, and contemporary inequities. The absence of measures for major racialized groups, such as Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and Filipinos, impedes researchers' ability to understand the contribution of implicit bias to the health and social disparities observed in Hawai'i. The purpose of this study was to measure bias toward these underrepresented groups to gain a preliminary understanding of the implicit racial bias within the distinctive context of this minority-majority state. This study measured implicit racial bias among college students in Hawai'i using 3 implicit association tests (IATs): (1) Native Hawaiian compared to White (N = 258), (2) Micronesian comparedto White (N =257), and (3) Filipino compared to Japanese (N = 236). Themean IAT D scores showed implicit biases that favored Native Hawaiiansover Whites, Whites over Micronesians, and Japanese over Filipinos. Multipleregression was conducted for each test with the mean IAT D score as theoutcome variable. The analysis revealed that race was a predictor in the vastmajority of tests. In-group preferences were also observed. This investigationadvances the understanding of racial/ethnic implicit biases in the uniquelydiverse state of Hawai'i and suggests that established social heirarchies mayinfluence implicit racial bias.

Recommendations for Contraception: Examining the Role of Patients' Age and Race.

The literature suggests that women of different races are more or less likely to use certain contraceptive methods and patient race can influence which contraceptive recommendations a provider makes. To explore whether health care providers treat individuals of different races differently, we conducted a preliminary investigation on whether medical students recommended different contraceptive methods for hypothetical patients presenting with the same clinical features who only varied by race. Third- and fourth-year medical students (n=103) at the University of Hawai'i completed an online survey. Students read case studies about a 23-year-old and 36-year-old patient and then made contraceptive recommendations. All students reviewed the same scenarios, with the exception of the patient's name which was randomly assigned to represent one of five racial/ethnic groups (White, Chinese, Filipina, Native Hawaiian, and Micronesian). Recommendations were analyzed using χ2 tests and bivariate logistic regressions. For the younger patient, students were most likely to recommend intrauterine devices (IUDs), followed by the contraceptive pill and Etonogestrel implant; recommendations did not differ by race/ethnicity (P = .91). For the older patient, students were most likely to recommend IUDs or sterilization, and Micronesian women were more likely to receive sterilization recommendations compared to White women (60% versus 27%, P = .04). In summary, contraceptive recommendations, specifically the frequency of recommending sterilization varied by race. Our findings add to the literature exploring the role of a patient's race/ethnicity on recommendations for contraception and highlights the need for more studies exploring the etiology of health care disparities.

In blind pursuit of racial equality?

Despite receiving little empirical assessment, the color-blind approach to managing diversity has become a leading institutional strategy for promoting racial equality, across domains and scales of practice. We gauged the utility of color blindness as a means to eliminating future racial inequity--its central objective--by assessing its impact on a sample of elementary-school students. Results demonstrated that students exposed to a color-blind mind-set, as opposed to a value-diversity mind-set, were actually less likely both to detect overt instances of racial discrimination and to describe such events in a manner that would prompt intervention by certified teachers. Institutional messages of color blindness may therefore artificially depress formal reporting of racial injustice. Color-blind messages may thus appear to function effectively on the surface even as they allow explicit forms of bias to persist.