Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities and Health Care Reform: A National Priority, Not a Marginal Issue
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As the nation addresses the impact of the new “health care reform” legislation, many issues need to be prioritized. Among them, racial and ethnic health disparities (health disparities) deserve very high priority because of their increasing major, and in many respects avoidable, personal, family, community, societal, financial, health related, economic, and social costs. These costs relate to the need for increased disease prevention, earlier disease detection, and more effective treatment.
Widespread Documentation and Advocacy for Action
U.S. racial and ethnic health disparities, and the need to eliminate them, has been widely documented by the following:
The landmark 2002 report of the Institute of Medicine “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care”, which found that U.S. racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to receive unequal treatment, and to experience a lower quality of health care.
African Americans have the highest rates of hypertension, the highest self-reported prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, and the highest rate of hospitalizations for stroke (Source: National Center for Health Statistics [NCHS]).
Rates of diabetes are 50 to 60% higher in Cuban Americans and 110 to 120% higher in Mexican Americans than in non-Hispanic Caucasians [NCHS].
The prevalence of diabetes in 2004 for 65-74 year olds was 27.7 % in Blacks, 26.0% in Hispanics, and 14.9% in Whites [NCHS].
68 of 81 studies on healthcare comparisons found that multicultural patients experience more disparities compared to White patients (Source: Institute of Medicine [IOM])
Multicultural populations receive lower quality health care than Caucasians even when insurance status, income, age and severity of conditions are comparable [IOM].
Cancer of the prostate is higher in African American men than any other population group in the U.S (Source: American Cancer Society [ACS])
Infant Mortality Rates in 2003 for Blacks was 13.61%, as compared to 6.84% for the total U.S. population, 8.73% for American Indians/Alaska Natives, 5.70% for Whites, 5.64% for Hispanics, 4.83% for Asian-Pacific Islanders.
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