Blacks, Latinos less likely to trust physicians, Penn study finds

Black and Latino patients are less likely than whites to believe that that their doctors care about them, a University of Pennsylvania researcher finds in a new study.

That means they may be less likely to seek medical help, adhere to physician's instructions, and follow up with difficult treatments, wrote Abigail Sewell, a postdoctoral research fellow at Penn's Population Studies Center.

Her study, published in the journal Social Science Research, relied on an analysis of surveys of 2,800 adults.

She found both blacks and Latinos were less likely than whites to trust the technical judgment and interpersonal competence of doctors.

The "trust gap" was even larger for Latino patients than for black patients.

Some previous research on the topic has inappropriately lumped minority groups together, Sewell wrote.

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