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Comment & Response
January 2017

A Missed Opportunity to Discuss Racial and Gender Bias in Dermatology—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Medicine, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida
  • 2Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida
JAMA Dermatol. 2017;153(1):111-112. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2016.3753

In Reply We thank Adamson et al for their interest in our article. To clarify, our most important finding was that patients, independent of dermatology clinic setting and regardless of race or gender, preferred physicians in photographs who wore professional attire.1 We believe our results are valid despite not including “no preference” as a possible answer. If no patient preference for physician attire existed, then answers would likely have been spread more equally among all possible choices. While we found that our study population preferred the white woman and black man in our photographs to wear professional attire at a greater rate than the white man in our photographs, this does not necessarily imply white or gender privilege in medicine. That is but one potential explanation.

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