JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites and may be a go-to source of health and dermatology education for the general population. Prior research indicates poor skin of color photo representation in printed dermatology textbooks and online medical websites[1] but has not assessed whether this discrepancy exists for Wikipedia.

Objective:

This study aims to investigate the number and quality of SOC photos included in Wikipedia’s skin disease pages and explore possible ramifications of these findings.

Methods:

Photos of skin diseases from Wikipedia’s “List of Skin Conditions” were assigned by three independent raters as skin of color (SOC) or non-skin of color (non-SOC) and were given a quality rating (1-3) based on sharpness, size/resolution, and lighting/exposure.

Results:

We identified 421 skin disease Wikipedia pages and 949 images that met our inclusion criteria. Within these pages, 20.7% of images of skin diseases (196 images) were SOC (Table 1). 79.3% of images of skin diseases (753 images) were non-SOC (P<0.001). The average quality for SOC images was 2.05 compared to 2.03 in non-SOC images (P=0.81) (Table 2).

Conclusions:

There is SOC underrepresentation in the gross number of SOC images for dermatologic conditions on Wikipedia. Wikipedia pages should be updated to include more SOC photos to mend this divide in order to ameliorate access to accurate dermatology information for the general public and improve health equity within dermatology.