Nada Elbuluk, MD, MSc, FAAD, speaks to USA Today highlighting the importance of diversity in medical education, as well as Project IMPACT’s and VisualDx’s role in improving health equity. Dr. Nada Elbuluk is a board-certified dermatologist, the director of clinical impact at VisualDx, and founder of Project IMPACT.
The highlights:
- Darker skin is underrepresented in medical training and textbooks and research on treatments for skin of color often initially lag, all leading to missed diagnoses and inequities in care.
- To help educate doctors, Dr. Elbuluk created Project IMPACT at VisualDx, a database of clinical images that helps medical professionals form diagnoses where she serves as the director of clinical impact.
- By the time certain conditions are diagnosed in darker-skinned patients, the disorders are often more advanced. Nail psoriasis, for example, more severely impacts patients of darker skin and is diagnosed later.
- Candrice Heath, MD, FAAD, a faculty scholar at Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine, explains that conditions that disproportionately affect people of color are more often minimized as cosmetic concerns and therefore treatment may not be covered by insurance.
Read the full story here.
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