BMI is a quick, cheap way for doctors to estimate body fat and screen for conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
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But medicine has long known that BMI is problematic and unnuanced. By using it, groups of people have fallen through the cracks and conditions have been caught late.
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So, some doctors want to add nuance – to consider race when using BMI. But using race in medicine comes with its own problems.
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So what’s the way forward? To find out, we talk to Katie Wu, a science writer at