Debates over the use of racial categories in medicine have, thus far, been largely focused on cases and considerations occurring in the United States. However, race is used in medical settings in many places outside the US. I argue that the US focus leads to important limitations in our ability to understand and intervene on issues of race in medicine in other areas of the world. I draw on work from metaphysics of race debates to indicate why transnational continuities and discontinuities in race present a problem for US focused philosophical accounts. I then highlight the ways in which three issues prominent in the current literature on race in medicine may differ when we look to contexts outside of the US. I outline the case of race and ethnicity data in epidemiological research in the UK as a concrete illustration of important differences deserving of philosophical attention.