AGA has been awarded a grant from the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) to reassess the use of race as a risk factor in its clinical practice guideline for Barrett’s esophagus screening. The project aims to re-examine the race-based recommendation through a collaborative effort between health equity experts, guideline methodologists, and researchers.
In addition to updating the Barrett’s esophagus guideline, the project will support the development of a framework for reviewing and updating the use of race in recommendations across AGA’s clinical practice guidelines — a model that other professional societies can adopt.

Shazia Siddique, MD, MSHP
"While race-based decision-making can be potentially harmful for many reasons — including reinforcing notions that racial differences in disease are purely biologic — removing race also warrants thoughtful considerations to ensure the highest risk patients receive the care they need, regardless of race or ethnicity. This grant will help us study this in a rigorous and comprehensive manner, with an overarching goal to improve population-health outcomes."
This grant comes at a critical time when federal funding for projects addressing health disparities is becoming increasingly limited. AGA is one of eight medical societies funded by the Doris Duke Foundation under the CMSS Encoding Equity Alliance to receive funding for auditing and revising how race is considered in their clinical guidelines. This initiative builds off prior funded efforts by other professional societies who have spearheaded similar work, including the American Academy of Pediatrics’ effort to remove race from an algorithm that assessed the presence of urinary tract infection, and the American Society of Nephrology, which convened a task force to remove race from a kidney function equation.