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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Lundy Braun studies racial health disparities and their history as a professor of both pathology and laboratory medicine and Africana studies and a member of the Science and Technology Studies Program.

In the June 1 edition of the European Respiratory Journal, Braun and her co-authors present a systematic review of 226 papers forming the historical evidence base for the automatic “correction” for racial differences in instruments called spirometers, which pulmonologists use to measure lung performance. In the analysis, she and her colleagues found that fewer than one in five studies defined race, even though they used it as a primary variable. Even fewer studies considered socioeconomic data.

When the paper first appeared online last summer it called for a conference at which physicians and racial scholars could examine this literature and determine the course of future research. Now in a new commentary accompanying the paper’s print version, Dr. Philip Quanjer backs the idea for that workshop, calling it “a timely initiative.”

Braun, meanwhile, will publish a book titled Breathing Race into the Machine: The...