Pleased to share Health Affairs article by Fernando DeMaio, PhD, Fellow, Chair of the IOMC Social Determinants of Health Workgroup,  and Board Director, Board of Governors; and  David Ansell, MD, Fellow, IOMC: 

If we stop measuring differences within the population, those differences do not disappear. We simply diminish our ability to see them, understand them, and determine whether they are getting better or worse.

On September 10, 2026, the Census Bureau proposed consequential changes to the 2030 census. The proposal would remove questions about race and ethnicity from the decennial census questionnaire and prohibit questions about sexual orientation from being used in the population count. It would also change the rules governing who is considered a resident for purposes of the census, excluding many people who live in the United States but are not citizens or lawful permanent residents.

These proposals raise a deceptively simple question: Who counts in the United States?

The Census Bureau argues that there are “substantial doubts about the meaning, significance, and impact” of categorizing people by race and ethnicity and questions whether collecting such information remains useful. Race, after all, is not a biological fact. Racial and ethnic categories are socially constructed, have changed repeatedly throughout US history, and will undoubtedly continue to change. But the fact that race is socially constructed does not make its consequences trivial.

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