"Eliminating Disparities in Healthcare: The Role of Healthcare Professionals"

Experience the complete proceedings on-line: streaming video of the lecture is now available.
Video (1:20 minutes)

Patient-physician relationships are the central milieu in which patients are diagnosed and given treatment and referrals. Therefore, physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, skills, and decision-making behaviors are important factors to consider when examining quality of care. Numerous studies document differences in the technical quality of healthcare received by whites and persons of color. Fewer studies focus on the interpersonal quality of care. This lecture focuses on the role of interpersonal quality of care in understanding and eliminating healthcare disparities, with a particular focus on patient-physician communication, physician bias, and racial or ethnic discordance between patients and physicians. The implications of this body of work for clinical practice, health-professional education, healthcare policy, and future research will be discussed.

Lisa A. Cooper is a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She holds joint appointments in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Nursing, and she is a member of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Medical Staff. She is a board-certified general internist and a health services and outcomes researcher. She received her undergraduate degree from Emory University, her medical degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her master of public health degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

This lecture is free and open to the public.