Researchers say they don't know why African-American and Hispanic adults were twice as likely to receive counseling from a physician on using alcohol than white adults were, but that is what they found.

They speculated that this could be a rare instance of minorities receiving better health care or it could mean physicians assume African-Americans and Hispanics have problems with alcohol.

"Yet blacks are less likely to be binge drinkers than whites," said study author Kenneth Miasmal, M.D., an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and an internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Researchers studied results from a national telephone survey of more than 15,000 people in 1999 on alcohol use and counseling services.

Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics were about twofold more likely than whites to receive counseling were.

The study appears in the March issue of the journal "Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research."

When Mukamal analyzed survey results for diet counseling, he found no substantial difference in the odds of receiving such counseling based on race or ethnicity, suggesting that the disparity in counseling about alcohol use did not extend to other preventive health counseling issues.

According to Mukamal, a difference in who gets alcohol counseling can lead to false excess reporting of alcohol abuse among blacks and Hispanics and may mean that problems with alcohol use are being missed among whites. "This will lead to perpetuation of stereotypes," he said.

"Everyone visiting the doctor should have this conversation, especially those with chronic conditions, regardless of their race or ethnicity," said Luisa N. Borrell, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology with Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "In contrast, it is interesting that the study also reports that there was no racial or ethnic difference in receiving diet counseling when the prevalence of overweight or obesity is higher among minorities."

"It would be naive to disregard the possibility of racial bias or stereotype toward blacks and Hispanics in medical settings and assume that the difference in who gets counseling about alcohol use is coincidental," Borrell said.

Doctors should be asking about alcohol use, but should be asking about it across the board, Mukamal said.