When we look at scientific data and health statistics, we tend to assume absolute objectivity. However, as public health experts point out, what we measure is often heavily affected by the prevailing culture. Cultural beliefs and values act as lenses through which researchers and clinicians experience the world, and over time, these lenses can harden into biases that act as intellectual blinders.
Instead of letting data guide us toward new understandings, the medical and scientific communities often force new data to fit into existing cultural constructs or dismiss it entirely when it refuses to comply.
Here are three examples of how prevailing cultural narratives have distorted what we measure, how we interpret it, and who gets harmed in the process.
1. The Dismissal of the “Hispanic Paradox”
In the United States, the prevailing cultural model for health assumes that minority ethnic status and poverty inevitably determine poor health outcomes.
However, data regarding Hispanic and Latinx Americans completely contradicted this model. Despite facing known health risk factors like lower incomes, lack of health insurance, and lower-quality prenatal care, Hispanic people in the U.S. live longer than non-Hispanic White people and experience lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
Instead of using this data to develop new, more accurate models of health, researchers allowed their cultural biases to dismiss it. They labeled the findings a “Hispanic paradox” an anomaly rather than a revelation. Researchers spent years trying to explain the data away, blaming it on things like incorrect death certificates or the “salmon bias” (a false theory that Hispanic Americans simply return to their birth countries to die). Because the data did not fit the prevailing cultural assumption of what a “disadvantaged” community’s health should look like, the medical establishment ignored an incredible opportunity to learn about longevity.
2. The Underestimation of Black Women’s Breast Cancer Risk
Cultural blinders also affect clinical trials and the creation of “standard” medical measurements. Historically, Black women have been vastly underrepresented in clinical trials. Because the prevailing culture of medical research centered largely on white populations, the traditional clinical tools developed to measure breast cancer recurrence risk were inherently biased.
As a result, the risk of breast cancer recurrence in Black women has often been severely underestimated by traditional clinical features. Black women are diagnosed with breast cancer less frequently than white women, but they are more likely to die from it. It wasn’t until researchers began utilizing advanced genomic testing that the truth emerged: Black women have a significantly higher prevalence of genomically high-risk luminal B and basal-type tumors. The standard measurements failed Black women because the prevailing culture of research excluded them from the baseline data.
3. The Gap in Traditional Therapy Models
The impact of cultural bias extends well beyond physical medicine into mental health. Dr. LaNail R. Plummer, a licensed therapist and author, points out that traditional academia and psychology courses largely fail to measure or account for the intersecting identities of Black women.
Because racism and patriarchy are foundational to our prevailing culture, Black women exist in a reality where they are simultaneously treated as expendable yet integral to the systems that oppress them. Standard therapy models are not built to measure or process this unique, systemic psychological toll. Furthermore, white clinicians often possess deeply embedded cultural messages and core beliefs about Black women that go unchallenged, preventing them from providing accurate, effective care.
Let’s dive into this a little more.
To understand why white clinicians often harbor unchallenged biases that prevent them from providing effective care to Black women, we have to look at how the medical and psychological fields interact with broader cultural narratives.
Clinicians are often trained to assume their perspective and the data they use are absolutely objective. However, cultural beliefs and values act as lenses through which clinicians experience the world, and over time, these lenses harden into biases that act as intellectual blinders. Medicine and academia have a long history of racialization, which has passed down generations of misinformation. Dr. LaNail R. Plummer explains that white clinicians absorb the same deeply embedded societal messages and core beliefs about Black women as the rest of the world.
These embedded messages remain intact because white clinicians rarely encounter situations that force them to examine their own cultural conditioning. Dr. Plummer says they often lack a challenging moment or a fork in the road that would prompt them to stop and consider whether they should continue thinking the way they do. Because they operate in a society where white, patriarchal perspectives are the default, their implicit beliefs about Black women go unchecked.
When clinicians view patients through these biased racial glasses, it prevents them from finding more meaningful underlying diagnoses or providing appropriate care. In therapy specifically, Dr. Plummer warns that when non-Black therapists attempt to counsel Black women without understanding the unique context of their intersecting identities, their pursuit of therapy can actually do more harm than good.
Both public health experts and mental health professionals argue that the only way to break this cycle is through deliberate, uncomfortable introspection. Clinicians must actively acknowledge the influence of their own culture to identify the implicit biases that have become ingrained in their models of care.
Dr. Plummer intentionally designed her book, The Essential Guide for Counseling Black Women, to take non-white therapists to task by forcing this introspection. She includes sections specifically for the therapist, asking blunt questions like, “Before reading this chapter, what did you think about Black women?” Her goal is to artificially create that fork in the road, so clinicians are forced to deconstruct their inherited biases before attempting to treat Black female patients.
Moving Toward New Models of Health
To fix these deeply ingrained problems, we must recognize that clustering diverse groups under broad, homogenized categories like “minority” or “disadvantaged” limits our understanding of real health risk factors.
If we want to build a truly equitable healthcare system, the first requirement is introspection. Researchers, clinicians, and institutions must examine their own cultural biases to identify the implicit beliefs that have become baked into research, care models, and even artificial intelligence. Only by taking off cultural blinders can we develop new, personalized models of health that reflect the realities of all communities.
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