Angela Udongwo, 3rd year medical student at Temple University, and Hillel Maresky, a radiologist at Temple University Hospital, are on a mission to improve how physicians interpret the radiological scans of Black patients with braids, twists, and locs.medical student Angela Udongwo spent her summer break quizzing Philadelphia-area physicians on their ability to identify the twists, locs and braids of Black patients’ hair when reading X-rays and other scans.
Udongwo and her research mentor, Temple radiologist Hillel Maresky, are on a mission to educate physicians to distinguish artifacts from illness so Black patients get better care.“The quicker that we do admit what we don’t know, we can have these conversations and be better doctors,” she said. Udongwo volunteered to take the lead on the hair research project. She saw an opportunity to help address a health disparity, and advance her research skills.The most common hairstyles for Black women were obvious to her, and so was the vocabulary around them, but it was all new to Maresky.
Udongwo began by reviewing all the medical research on the topic that she could find before designing her survey. She found almost no studies on the issue of Black hair in X-ray, CAT scans, and MRIs.The team decided to focus the research on determining how often radiologists read scans wrong because of these common Black hairstyles.
Udongwo showed physicians a series of radiological images and asked them whether what they were seeing was an indication of disease or an artifact in hairstyles common in the Black community. The survey also asked physicians to rank how confident they are with their choice.
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