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- FoDiRa-Project: Racism in health care
An extensive body of literature, mainly referring to the United States, illustrates how racism constitutes a public health problem with adverse impacts on the health of disadvantaged and marginalized social groups (see the review in Krieger, 2014). Despite the importance of this topic, there is limited research on racism and health in Germany. To address these knowledge gaps, the project "Racism in Health Care" strives to examine two central aspects: racism in emergency departments as well as implicit and explicit bias among health care workers. The first module attempts to establish and assess objective indicators that measure ethnic and racial disparities in resource utilization as well as service and treatment quality in emergency departments in Berlin. The aim is to objectify differences in emergency department care based on ethnic and religious origin using a range of indicators such as triage acuity scores, patients’ average waiting time in the context of comparable symptoms (triage group) and hospital admission.
The second module aims to examine system relevant and contextual factors that influence biases among health care workers. The guiding question of this module is to what extent does the ongoing economization of the healthcare system as well as the resulting shortage of staff and time promote discriminatory behavior of physicians towards racialized groups. To be able to explore such associations, this module aims to undertake a factorial survey experiment with physicians in Germany. Qualitative interviews will be conducted to accompany both parts of the project. The knowledge that will be gained from these interviews is important as it helps in understanding the processes behind the trends and patterns identified in the quantitative part of the project.
Objectives
- Develop and analyze objective indicators to measure care inequality in emergency departments
- Analyze the effect of economisation on health care delivery for racialised groups

Contact
Dana Abdel Fatah
Research assistant at the BIM and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Dana.Abdel-Fatah(at)charite.de