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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2004 - 20103

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    Health Reform and Communities of Color: Implications for Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
    (2010) UNSPECIFIED
    By 2045, more than half of the population in the U.S. will be a person of color. In general, people of color continue to experience worse access to health care and worse health outcomes than their white counterparts. The economic and opportunity costs associated with disparities are shared by everyone through money spent on preventable medical care and lost productivity in the workplace, among other things. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, enacted by Congress and signed by President Obama in March, extends health coverage to many of the millions of individuals who would otherwise remain uninsured, and includes several provisions that will either directly or indirectly impact racial and ethnic health disparities. People of color have much to gain from health reform. Although they represent one-third of the total U.S. population, they comprise more than 50 percent of the uninsured.
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    NATIONAL VOLUNTARY CONSENSUS STANDARDS FOR AMBULATORY CARE: PERFORMANCE MEASURES TO ADDRESS HEALTHCARE DISPARITIES
    (2007) UNSPECIFIED
    All Americans should receive quality health care, regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, insurance status, or gender. Unfortunately, significant health care disparities based on these characteristics persist, and in some cases are getting worse1. The 2001 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, identified eliminating healthcare disparities as one of the six overarching goals to improve the quality of the American healthcare system(Institute of Medicine). In 2003, the IOM published Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Health Care2. This report assessed the extent to which racial and ethnic healthcare disparities in the United States can be directly attributed to race and ethnicity and not other know factors such at access to care, insurance status or ability to pay for care, and provide recommendations regarding there elimination. In 2003, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) published the first national comprehensive report that measured differences in access and use of health care services by various populations in the United States. The results painted a stark picture of the disparate care delivered by the US healthcare system. The 2006 National Healthcare Disparities Report found that for most core quality measures, Blacks (73%), Hispanics (77%), and poor people (71%) received worse quality care than their reference groups3. Additionally, for most measures for poor people (67%), disparities were increasing the most in minorities with no significant changes in disparities observed. Even more alarming, disparities were increasing and more prevalent in chronic disease management. Addressing issues of quality within vulnerable patient populations is the overarching highest priority within each the 23 National Quality Forum (NQF)-endorsedTM national priority areas for healthcare quality improvement4. This series of recommendations is a step towards integrating the reduction of healthcare disparities into the larger quality measurement and pubic reporting agenda.
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    Health Insurance Plans Address Disparities in Care: Challenges and Opportunities
    (2004) UNSPECIFIED
    In 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a landmark report indicating that racial and ethnic minorities receive lower quality health care than non-minorities, even when factors related to access (e.g., insurance status and income) are controlled. There is widespread agreement that data are fundamental building blocks to identifying differences in the care experienced by specific populations, to developing programs to address differences, and to ensuring a higher standard of care. Since then, there has been growing interest in understanding the extent to which health insurance plans, providers, and other organizations collect and use data on race and ethnicity to reduce health care disparities. To date, national studies have identified very few providers or institutions that address disparities in care using a data-driven, quality improvement proach. In 2003/04, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) worked with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to survey health insurance plans about the extent to which they collect and use data on the race and ethnicity of their enrollees to improve quality of care. AHIP also conducted follow-up qualitative research to obtain more specific information, to solicit recommendations on how to improve the collection and use of these data, and to explore potential future collaborations. A number of challenges and opportunities emerged from this quantitative and qualitative research.