Identifying and Addressing Implicit Biases in Healthcare Delivery

View Training

Implicit biases involve associations outside conscious awareness that can lead to negative, inaccurate, or unfair evaluations of a person on the basis of identity or social status. Evidence indicates that healthcare professionals exhibit the same levels of implicit bias as the wider population based on race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, and socioeconomic status. Provider bias can lead to poorer health outcomes in already-marginalized patients. It also influences a provider’s approach to diagnosis, treatment, and levels of care. This e-learning module discusses the difference between explicit and implicit biases, the types of bias present in healthcare, and how to identify and change these biases in yourself and others. 

Learning Objectives

• Explain the difference between implicit and explicit bias. 
• Identify at least five types of bias that occur in healthcare settings. 
• Describe how unconscious bias can affect everyday interactions with patients, students, colleagues, and team members. 
• Explain how personal unconscious biases can influence perceptions of gender, race/ethnicity, and/or cultural attributes in healthcare. 
• Provide strategies to recognize, correct, and eliminate personal unconscious biases in daily interactions and among healthcare teams. 

Faculty

• Jordan White, DrPH, MS
  Jordan White, DrPH, MSW is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Morgan State University in the Bachelors of Social Work Department. Dr. White is also the Honors Program Coordinator for the School. His research laboratory, the White Lab, established in 2021 is one of the first training programs to center and incorporate undergraduate social work students at a Historically Black College or University.
• Tamara A. Henry, Ed.D
  Dr. Tamara A. Henry serves as a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at George Washington University. She has received two awards from GW for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduate Public Health. She is also an inaugural member of the Master Teaching Academy. Prior to academia, Dr. Henry spent over a decade in state and local government providing grantees with technical assistance as well as addressing health disparities and monitoring and evaluating health promotion programs in underserved populations.