Surgical Care for Racial and Ethnic Minorities and Interventions to Address Inequities: A Narrative Review

Racial and ethnic inequities in surgical care in the United States are well documented. Less is understood about evidence-based interventions that improve surgical care and reduce or eliminate inequities. In this review, we discuss effective patient, surgeon, community, health care system, policy, and multi-level interventions to reduce inequities and identifying gaps in intervention-based research.

Evidenced-based interventions to reduce racial and ethnic inequities in surgical care are key to achieving surgical equity. Surgeons, surgical trainees, researchers, and policy makers should be aware of the evidence-based interventions known to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in surgical care for prioritization of resource allocation and implementation. Future research is needed to assess interventions effectiveness in the reduction of disparities and patient-reported measures.

We searched PubMed database for English-language studies published from January 2012 through June 2022 to assess interventions to reduce or eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in surgical care. A narrative review of existing literature was performed identifying interventions that have been associated with reduction in racial and ethnic disparities in surgical care.

Achieving surgical equity will require implementing evidenced-based interventions to improve quality for racial and ethnic minorities. Moving beyond description toward elimination of racial and ethnic inequities in surgical care will require prioritizing funding of intervention-based research, utilization of implementation science and community based-participatory research methodology, and principles of learning health systems.