When Maria Oliva-Hemker, MD, was training to be a pediatric gastroenterologist in the 1990s, the medical literature of the day indicated that inflammatory bowel disease overwhelmingly affected white patients. As she treated patients in Baltimore, however, it was clear to her a significant population of Black children had IBD, too.
In fact, the incidence of IBD has been increasing in African American and Hispanic patients in recent decades. But it is harder for these patients, and Black patients