For years, physicians and medical students, many of them Black, have warned that the most widely used kidney test — the results of which are based on race — is racist and dangerously inaccurate. Their appeals are gaining new traction, with a wave of petitions and papers calling renewed attention to the issue.

In recent weeks, physicians and medical students at a handful of prominent universities have called on their administrations to end the use of race-based kidney testing, pointing to such changes at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2017 and at Mass General Brigham and the University of Washington earlier this summer.

On the heels of those petitions, as well as a widely circulated New England Journal of Medicine analysis of the kidney test and other medical tools that are biased against Black patients, the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Nephrology announced this month that they will convene a task force to evaluate the use of race in kidney testing.

Read the entire story at Stat News. Naomi Nkinsi is a medical student in the Global Health Pathway.