Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
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Item Reducing Disparities: Goals, Roles, and Opportunities Roundtable Themes and Implications(2006) Meyers, KateA vast published literature documents the existence of disparities in health and health care in the United States. Today, many organizations seeking to reduce disparities are moving beyond documenting the problem to focusing on solutions. Most current nationally prominent initiatives to reduce disparities take place within health care systems and focus on specific conditions, populations, or care settings. Fewer efforts have been made to discern how public and private policy actors and decision-makers can work collectively to address the broader range of interacting factors that impact disparities – including but not limited to the health care system. Kaiser Permanente’s Institute for Health Policy, Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit, and The California Endowment saw an opportunity to bring together 30 experts on health disparities in September 2006 in San Francisco. This roundtable aimed to push the dialogue on health disparities beyond the usual boundaries of health systems and toward notions of multi sectoral collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and developing policy solutions to address the broad range of underlying influences on health.Item Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities: Influences, Actors, and Policy Opportunities(Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, 2007) Meyers, KateMuch has been written on the existence of racial and ethnic differences in health status and health care access and quality in the United States. Researchers, think tanks, government entities, and advocacy organizations have worked to summarize many of the root causes, environmental and behavioral influences, and health system factors that play a role. Yet sustained and significant change has been elusive. Efforts to reduce disparities will continue to fall short unless the complex interplay of influences are understood and addressed, and synergies among actors who can impact those influences are realized. The Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy has produced this review and synthesis of the literature to spur thinking and discussion among those who inform, influence, and make public and private policy impacting health. Areas of analysis include the landscape of influences on health disparities, which policy actors are best positioned to intervene, and where those actors may have the most impact. Given the complex nature of disparities, to date most action has focused on individual sectors of health or social policy, such as coverage for the uninsured, linguistically appropriate care, or neighborhood improvements to support healthy eating and active living.Item Issue Brief: Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities(2007) Meyers, KateWhy is this Issue Relevant to Policymakers? Efforts to reduce the disturbing levels of racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care in the United States will continue to fall short unless the complex interplay of social, physical, and organizational influences is better understood and addressed through collaborative, interdisciplinary actions. What are Health Disparities? No universally accepted definition of health disparities or health inequities exists. To some, disparities are simply differences in health processes or outcomes between population groups. However, more precise descriptions focus on differences where one group is “losing” or where differences are seen as avoidable and unjust. For example, some differences between groups (such as men and women) are based on different physiology and are not “unjust,” and do not fall within the purview of health disparities. Other differences – such as average life span for racial or socioeconomic groups – are connected to issues of social advantage and are thus viewed as health disparities or inequities. In the United States, much work has focused on racial and ethnic health disparities, while many other countries focus more on socioeconomic differences.