Considerations of race and ethnicity within rehabilitation studies for post COVID-19 condition: A scoping review.
Nadine Akbar, Siona Phadke, Sumaya Mehelay and 3 others
PMID 41108594WHAT IT FOUND
Most long COVID rehabilitation studies are done in the UK and US with samples that are 88% White.
Few studies considered race or ethnicity in how they recruited or analyzed results. This limits how much current rehab evidence applies to minority patients.
Key findings
01The total number of participants across the 13 studies that reported race and/or ethnicity characteristics of their sample was 1231 with 1079 (88%) being White.
02No article in this scoping review described race or ethnicity in either their inclusion or exclusion criteria.
03Less than 25% of studies included considerations for race and/or ethnicity in their recruitment strategies ( n = 3, 13%) or data analysis ( n = 5, 22%), respectively.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only English-language publications were included, potentially missing studies focused on non-English speaking populations. Most studies were conducted in the UK and US, limiting global generalizability. Definitions of long COVID varied significantly across the included studies, with only 26% using the widely accepted 12-week symptom duration criteria. The review included six protocols and several case reports/series, which provide lower levels of evidence than trials or cohorts. The small number of non-White participants in the included studies prevented any meaningful analysis of effectiveness by race or ethnicity.
Declared interests
None declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lack of reported disparities in outcomes as evidence that rehabilitation is equally effective for all races. The studies were too small and too White to detect differences, and most did not analyze results by race or ethnicity.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →