Mona Shahriari, MD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University and associate director of clinical trials at Central Connecticut Dermatology, provides on overview of the treatment landscape in patients with skin of color with plaque psoriasis.
A lot of dermatologists don't feel comfortable diagnosing and treating psoriasis in patients with skin of color, says Mona Shahriari, MD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University and associate director of clinical trials at Central Connecticut Dermatology. Shahriari has always had an interest in inflammatory skin disease, particularly in patients with melanin rich skin and how to treat these patients who may be facing burdens in receiving care.
Transcript
Can you provide an overview of your presentation at the 2023 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference on the treatment of plaque psoriasis in patients with skin of color? What unique challenges or nuances were addressed?
I have always had a strong interest in inflammatory skin disease, but in particular, in patients with skin of color, just because in my neck of the woods, I was never trying to be a skin of color expert, but people saw my skin color. So they said, she probably knows how to treat our skin. And they would just flock to me. So, little by little, I had to learn more about how to treat different skin conditions in patients with melanin rich skin.
And what I find is, we don't actually get a lot of training in our residences, things are changing. Now, I'd say in the year 2023, we definitely have a lot more resources at our disposal. But when I was undergoing residency, I won't tell you how long ago, it was not something that was readily available as part of our curriculum. It wasn't something that I would see in my everyday clinical practice. And if I was interested, I had to seek it out myself. And I think that really contributes to some of the disparities that we're seeing in the treatment of plaque psoriasis in our patients with skin color. Because for starters, the social determinants of health are going to lead to issues in terms of patients actually getting to a specialist. Maybe they're in a geographic region where they don't have access to a specialist, maybe due to economic reasons they can't take time off of work to go see a specialist during business hours, so they end up getting paired care in an ER or an urgent care setting where a specialist obviously is not available.
But for those patients that overcome those hurdles, and they actually make it to a dermatologists office, a lot of the [dermatologists] don't feel comfortable diagnosing and treating psoriasis and skin color. Now they're either being incorrectly diagnosed or they're being under-treated because disease severity is being assessed incorrectly, or the treatments that are out there. If the provider doesn't know how to properly educate the patient on the treatments, there may be this sense of distrust between the provider and the patient. And then they can never embark on those new emerging therapies that can be really game changing for that particular patient. So this has definitely been an area of immense research and interest. So we're going to really dive deeper into how we can help bridge the gaps and allow for patients to delay patients to receive more inclusive care.
ATS 2024: Bridging the Past, Present, and Future of Respiratory Care
May 16th 2024The application of artificial intelligence in medicine is anticipated as a highlight of ATS 2024, with sessions exploring its applications in research, radiological interpretation, and pediatric pulmonology.
Read More
Frameworks for Advancing Health Equity: Urban Health Outreach
May 9th 2024In the series debut episode of "Frameworks for Advancing Health Equity," Mary Sligh, CRNP, and Chelsea Chappars, of Allegheny Health Network, explain how the Urban Health Outreach program aims to improve health equity for individuals experiencing homelessness.
Listen
Tackling Health Inequality: The Power of Education and Experience
April 30th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are bringing you a special month-long podcast series with our Strategic Alliance Partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our final episode of this limited series and our conversation with Janine Jelks-Seale, MSPPM, director of health equity at UPMC Health Plan.
Listen