Physicians hold attitudes about the causes of racial differences in health conditions, and they use race as a heuristic in their clinical practice. The presentation will explore the interaction of patient and provider characteristics on health care providers’ use of genetics and genomics knowledge in their clinical practice. Advancing this field of study requires research to assess how clinicians use and think about race and human genetic variation. Understanding physicians’ perceptions of race and genetics and its use in the clinical encounter as a context to shed light on contributors to racial and ethnic health disparities and the role genetic screening programs and genomic medicine may or may not have in reducing those racial and ethnic health disparities.

Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2011;20(10 Suppl):ED04-02.