Medical Students Lead Effort to Remove Race from Kidney Function Estimates

Illustration of kidneys representing research on race and kidney function.

(Published in kidneynews.org)

When a lecturer at the University of Washington School of Medicine described the use of black race as an adjustment in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) calculations, it made medical student Naomi Nkinsi uncomfortable. The use of race as a proxy for muscle mass hearkened back to racist comments she’d heard suggesting that black people have more muscle or are otherwise biologically different.