Minority Health and Health Equity Archive

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769

Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

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Author: search.filters.author.Kawachi, Ichiro

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Understanding high-risk behavior among non-dominant minorities: A social resistance framework
    (2011) Factor, Roni; Kawachi, Ichiro; Williams, David R.
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    Ethnicity and nativity status as determinants of perceived social support: Testing the concept of familism
    (2009) Almeida, Joanna; Molnar, Beth E.; Kawachi, Ichiro; Subramanian, S.V.
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    Why justice is good for our health: the social determinants of health inequalities.
    (1999) Daniels, Norman; Kennedy, Bruce P; Kawachi, Ichiro
    We have known for over 150 years that an individual’s chances of life and death are patterned according to social class: the more affluent and educated people are, the longer and healthier their lives. These patterns persist even when there is universal access to health care – a fact quite surprising to those who think financial access to medical services is the primary determinant of health status. In fact, recent cross-national evidence suggests that the greater the degree of socioeconomic inequality that exists within a society, the steeper the gradient of health inequality. As a result, middle-income groups in a less equal society will have worse health than comparable or even poorer groups in a society with greater equality.
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    Sex and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Outcomes After Acute Myocardial Infarction
    (2005) Iribarren, Carlos; Tolstykh, Irina; Somkin, Carol P.; Ackerson, Lynn M.; Brown, Timothy T.; Scheffler, Richard; Syme, Leonard; Kawachi, Ichiro
    Background Previous studies have documented sex and racial/ethnic disparities in outcomes after acute myocardial infarction (AMI), but the explanation of these disparities remains limited. In a setting that controls for access to medical care, we evaluated whether sex and racial/ethnic disparities in prognosis after AMI persist after consideration of socioeconomic background, personal medical history, and medical management. Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study of the members (20 263 men and 10 061 women) of an integrated health care delivery system in northern California who had experienced an AMI between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2002, and were followed up for a median of 3.5 years (maximum, 8 years). Main outcome measures included AMI recurrence and all-cause mortality. Results In age-adjusted analyses relative to white men, black men (hazard ratio [HR], 1.44; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.26-1.65), black women (HR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.26-1.72), and Asian women (HR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.13-1.65) were at increased risk of AMI recurrence. However, multivariate adjustment for sociodemographic background, comorbidities, medication use, angiography, and revascularization procedures effectively removed the excess risk of AMI recurrence in these 3 groups. Similarly, the increased age-adjusted risk of all-cause mortality seen in black men (HR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.37-1.75) and black women (HR, 1.45; 95% CI, 1.27-1.66) was greatly attenuated in black men and reversed in black women after full multivariate adjustment. Conclusion In a population with equal access to medical care, comprehensive consideration of social, personal, and medical factors could explain sex and racial/ethnic disparities in prognosis after AMI.
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    Health Disparities By Race And Class:Why Both Matter
    (2005) Kawachi, Ichiro; Daniels, Norman; Robinson, Dean E
    In this essay we examine three competing causal interpretations of racial disparities in health. The first approach views race as a biologically meaningful category and racial disparities in health as reflecting inherited susceptibility to disease. The second approach treats race as a proxy for class and views socioeconomic stratification as the real culprit behind racial disparities. The third approach treats race as neither a biological category nor a proxy for class, but as a distinct construct, akin to caste. We point to hisHtorical, political, and ideological obstacles that have hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health.