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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Item The Urgency of Now: Recruiting and Retaining Racially and Ethnically Diverse Professionals in the Health Professions(2007) UNSPECIFIEDIn 2003, the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce, headed by former Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., began formulating recommendations to bring about systemic change that would address the scarcity of minorities in health professions in the United States. Their 2004 report entitled, “Missing Persons: Minorities in the Health Professions,” documented the severe shortage of under-represented minorities, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, in the health professions. Although the Sullivan Commission focused solely on physicians, nurses and dentists, the lack of under-represented minorities is also a serious concern in pharmacy, public health and the allied health sciences. The issue will reach crisis proportion as the demographic composition of the United States shifts away from a white majority to a far more multi-ethnic society. By 2020, non-Hispanic whites will decrease to 61% of the population while African Americans will increase to 13% and other minorities, including Hispanics, will increase from 19 to 26% (HRSA). By 2050, Blacks are projected to be 14.6%, Hispanics 24.4%, and Native American/Alaska Natives, 1.8% of the US population (Mitchell and Lassiter, 2006). In contrast, in 2004, whites were 64% of medical graduates, 63% of dental graduates and 75% of public health graduates (Mitchell and Lassiter, 2006). This glaring problem will only be exacerbated in the future. The Sullivan Commission framed their recommendations around three principles: 1) to increase diversity in the health professions, the culture of health professions schools must change; 2) new and nontraditional paths to the health professions should be explored; and 3) commitments must be at the highest levels of our government and in the private sector (p. 3). The Commission’s recommendations were congruent with central recommendations of the 2004 Institute of 2 Medicine report, In the Nation’s Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce (Smedley, 2004).Item Researchers Publish Results of Largest Genome-Wide Linkage Study of Prostate Cancer Among African American Men(2006) UNSPECIFIEDBethesda, Md. — Researchers from 12 institutions, including the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the results of the first genome-wide linkage study of prostate cancer in African Americans. Using genetic markers, researchers identified several regions of the human genome that likely contain genes that, when altered, increase the risk of developing prostate cancer.Item Racism in Medicine: Health Parity for African Americans(2002) UNSPECIFIEDThere are many false race-based myths concerning the history of man’s culture, civilization and modern medicine that are believed and taught even today. Today, these myths are being perpetuated, intentionally or unintentionally, in our universities and lower educational systems — and are therefore fostering misunderstandings that hinder resolving the issue of race and racism that is pervasive in American society. You will hear a provocative yet historic and evidenced-based presentation designed to further your understanding on the impact that racism had and still has in medicine.