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47 episodes

The Myth of Race and Genetics
2026-06-10 | 26 mins.
We now know that humans are more than 99.9% genetically alike. So why does medicine still link certain diseases to race? And what do genetics actually tell us about race, ancestry, and disease?

A full transcript of this episode is available at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2601980.
BiDil — The Story of the Black Pill
2026-06-03 | 25 mins.
How did a drug for congestive heart failure get approved and marketed for Black people only?

A full transcript of this episode is available at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2601978.
When Race Matters
2026-05-27 | 26 mins.
The story of the pulse oximeter demonstrates that sometimes consideration of race is critical to diagnosis and treatment — as came starkly into light during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A full transcript of this episode is available at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2601977.
Money and Misdiagnosis
2026-05-20 | 24 mins.
Many Black veterans live below the poverty line, often struggling to manage their illnesses. As V.A. hospitals began to stop using race-corrected interpretation of Black patients’ spirometer readings, there was an epiphany: the race correction wasn’t just harming the health of Black patients, it was also hurting them financially.

A full transcript of this episode is available at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2601976.
How Did Race Get Into Lung Testing?
2026-05-13 | 31 mins.
The history of race-based correction of lung-capacity measures can be traced to a pre–Civil War belief among slave owners that slaves had naturally inferior lung capacity. Despite work to show that race-corrected spirometers mask lung-disease severity in Black patients, the majority of U.S. hospitals still use them.

A full transcript of this episode is available at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2601975.

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About Intention to Treat

Welcome to “Intention to Treat,” a podcast exploring the critical issues shaping medicine today. In a new 8-week series, The Race Equation, we confront harmful assumptions about race in clinical medicine—from diagnostic algorithms to guidelines—exploring how these practices took hold, why they endure, and what it will take to change them. Hosted by health care journalist Rachel Gotbaum, the “Intention to Treat” podcast from the New England Journal of Medicine delves into groundbreaking research and clinical advances while sharing the personal stories from doctors and their patients, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes look at discoveries that are changing medical practice on the front lines of health care. Listen to The Race Equation and follow “Intention to Treat” on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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