Darker skin tones were underrepresented in images on patient-facing online educational material about skin cancer, an analysis of photos from six different federal and organization websites showed.
"Given the known disparities patients with darker skin tones face in terms of increased skin cancer morbidity and mortality, this lack of representation further disadvantages those patients by not providing them with an adequate representation of how skin cancers manifest on their skin tones," the study's first author, Alana Sadur, who recently completed her third year at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC, said in an interview.
In findings related to nondisease representations on the websites, darker skin tones were depicted in just 22.7% of stock photos and 26.1% of website front pages., professor and chair of dermatology at George Washington University, Washington, DC, emphasized the need for trusted sources like national organizations and federally funded agencies to be purposeful with their selection of images to"ensure all visitors to the site are represented," he told this news organization.
"This is very important when dealing with skin cancer as a lack of representation could easily be misinterpreted as epidemiological data, meaning this gap could suggest certain individuals do not get skin cancer because photos in those skin tones are not present," he added."This doesn't even begin to touch upon the diversity of individuals in the stock photos or lack thereof, which can perpetuate the lack of diversity in our specialty. We need to do better.
Health Health Latest News, Health Health Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: Medscape - 🏆 386. / 55 Read more »
Source: Allure_magazine - 🏆 473. / 51 Read more »