“Wimpy White Boy Syndrome’: How Racial Bias Creeps Into Neonatal Care"

“Stanford University School of Medicine researchers analyzed more than 18,600 hospital records for California-born babies with a very low birth weight (3.3 pounds or less). Intended to measure performance and care disparity, researchers scored the records on whether the patient received care within standard medical practices and outcomes. The scores indicated that Latino infants and those listed with “other” as an ethnicity were treated the worst. Hospitals with the best patient outcomes treated white patients better, while Blacks received better care in poorer-quality NICUs...

Although statistics back up the belief that prematurely born Black babies will do better than white infants in most cases, it is not a guarantee of positive health outcomes. Yet, the aggressiveness in treatment for surviving premature babies of color is proportional to these assumptions. According to the Stanford study, Black infants received less steroid therapy for lung development; did not have timely exams for retinopathy of prematurity, a disease causing the abnormal growth of blood vessels in the eye; weren’t given human breast milk as often; and developed more infections due to careless hospital handling than whites, Latinos, or Asians...

The study also does not take into consideration anecdotal responses to care such as the unofficial diagnosis of “wimpy white boy syndrome” (WWBS) used in many hospitals throughout the U.S. Dr. David G. Oelberg, a neonatologist with the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia, defines this condition in his Neonatal Intensive Care editorial as “a neonatal white boy with adjusted gestational age of 35-40 weeks who is failing to achieve the developmental landmarks of weaning to an open crib and/or not taking all of his oral feeds as expected.” Mostly, NICU staff will “diagnose” a baby with WWBS if he is failing to improve in the absence of other obvious medical conditions.”

https://rewire.news/article/2017/10/18/wimpy-white-boy-syndrome-bias-neonatal-care/