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 Using community-based participatory research to ameliorate cancer disparities.(2010) Gehlert, Sarah; Coleman, RobertAlthough much attention has been paid to health disparities in the past decades, interventions to ameliorate disparities have been largely unsuccessful. One reason is that the interventions have not been culturally tailored to the disparity populations whose problems they are meant to address. Community-engaged research has been successful in improving the outcomes of racial and ethnic minority groups and thus has great potential for decreasing between-group health disparities. In this article, the authors argue that a type of community-engaged research, community-based participatory research (CBPR), is particularly useful for social workers doing health disparities research because of its flexibility and degree of community engagement. After providing an overview of community research, the authors define the parameters of CBPR, using their own work in African American and white disparities in breast cancer mortality as an example of its application. Next, they outline the inherent challenges of CBPR to academic and community partnerships. The authors end with suggestions for developing and maintaining successful community and academic partnerships.Item Community Demographics and Access to Health Care among U.S. Hispanics(2009) Gresenz, Carole Roan; Rogowski, Jeannette; Escarce, José J.OBJECTIVE: To explore the influence of the communities in which Hispanics live on their access to health care. DATA: 1996-2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data, linked to secondary data sources and including 14,504 observations from 8,371 Mexican American respondents living in metropolitan areas. STUDY DESIGN: We use multivariate probit regression models, stratified by individuals' insurance status, for analyses of four dependent variables measuring access to health care. We measure community characteristics at the zip code tabulation area level, and key independent variables of interest are the percentage of the population that speaks Spanish and percentage of the population that is immigrant Hispanic. Each of these measures is interacted with individual-level measures of nativity and length of U.S. residency. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For Mexican American immigrants, living in an area populated by relatively more Spanish speakers or more Hispanic immigrants is associated with better access to care. The associations are generally stronger for more recent immigrants compared with those who are better established. Among U.S.-born Mexican Americans who are uninsured, living in areas more heavily populated with Spanish-speaking immigrants is negatively associated with access to care. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that characteristics of the local population, including language and nativity, play an important role in access to health care among U.S. Hispanics, and point to the need for further study, including analyses of other racial and ethnic groups, using different geographic constructs for describing the local population, and, to the extent possible, more specific exploration of the mechanisms through which these characteristics may influence access to care.Item Twenty years after. The legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Outside the community(1992) Edgar, HaroldTwenty years ago, when the Washington Star told the public that the United States Public Health Service had, since 1932, maintained a study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male that was still going on, my reaction was, How could people have done this? I later worked on the participants' lawsuit, and I learned of the study's many complexities. In the end, though, the best explanation of "how" it could have happened is the obvious one: the researchers did not see the participants as part of "their" community or, indeed, as people whose lives could or would be much affected by what the researchers did.Item Take a Health Professional to the People: A community outreach strategy for mobilizing African American barber shops and beauty salons as health promotion sites(2006) Browne, Mario C.; Ford, Angela F.; Thomas, Stephen B.Objectives In September 2002, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched “Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day”, a national effort to promote health and wellness in the African American community. The Center for Minority Health (CMH) at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh adopted this model and tailored it to meet local needs by partnering with seven barbershops, two beauty salons, and over one hundred health professionals (HPs) to create what is now known as “Take a Health Professional to the People Day”. The focus of this partnership was to provide screenings and health information to patrons and transform these shops and salons into health promotion sites.Item Community Development Model for Public Health Applications: Overview of a Model to Eliminate Population Disparities(2005) Robinson, Robert G.For well over two decades, the public health community has undertaken a broad range of initiatives to identify and eliminate various health-related disparities among popula tions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s(CDC) Office on Smoking and Health (OSH),for example, has committed resources to help states eliminate population disparities related to tobacco use.These initiatives have enjoyed a degree of success and some measurable decreases in population disparities. However, traditional public health approaches that are overly influenced by reductionist paradigms more content with risk factor assessment of at-risk strata may not be sufficient to produce successful results when applied to more intractable disparities. The elimination of disparities will require a more encompassing and comprehensive approach that addresses both population strata at risk and the communities in which they reside. This article proposes a new, concentrated model to address the elimination of population disparities—a model that focuses on community as the critical unit of analysis and action to achieve success.Item BCHS 2524 Overview of Minority Health and Health Disparities in the US: Course Syllabus (FALL: 2006-2007 School Year)(2006) Thomas, Stephen B.BCHS 2524 Overview of Minority Health and Health Disparities in the US: Course Syllabus (FALL: 2006-2007 School Year)Item Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Health: Findings From Community Studies(2003) Williams, David R.; Neighbors, Harold W.; Jackson, James S.The authors review the available empirical evidence from population-based studies of the association between perceptions of racial/ethnic discrimination and health. This research indicates that discrimination is associated with multiple indicators of poorer physical and, especially, mental health status. However, the extant research does not adequately address whether and how exposure to discrimination leads to increased risk of disease. Gaps in the literature include limitations linked to measurement of discrimination, research designs, and inattention to the way in which the association between discrimination and health unfolds over the life course. Research on stress points to important directions for the future assessment of discrimination and the testing of the underlying processes and mechanisms by which discrimination can lead to changes in health. (Am J Public Health. 2003;93:200-208)