Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
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Item Advancing Public Health Education Through Place-Based Learning: “On the Road in the Deep South”(2019-03-27) Fifolt, Matthew; McCormick, LisaDocumented health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities exist in the United States, and health injustices frequently have deep historical ties, especially in the South. Therefore, it is critically important for students to understand root causes of both historical and contemporary public health issues and their effects on population health. In spring 2018, 15 undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham participated in a six-credit-hour travel course by touring throughout the Deep South to learn more about the ways in which history and place interact with programs, policies, and practices to influence population health. Students saw firsthand how the social determinants of health frequently affected access to health care and discovered the value of a multidisciplinary approach to public health and health programs in addressing health equity. The purpose of this article is to describe student experiences with the travel course through an exploration of students’ reflective journal entries, blog posts, and student presentations. Additionally, the authors report results of a self-assessment designed to measure student interest and level of comfort in working with, or on behalf of, medically underserved populations. The article concludes with implications for public health and best practices for offering place-based courses across academic majors.Item The right to sutures: social epidemiology, human rights, and social justice.(2010) Venkatapuram, Sridhar; Bell, Ruth; Marmot, MichaelThe article examines the convergences and contrasts between social epidemiology, social medicine, and human rights approaches toward advancing global health and health equity. The first section describes the goals and work of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. The second section discusses the role of human rights in the Commission's work. The third section evaluates, from the perspective of social epidemiology, two rights-based approaches to advancing health and health equity as compared to a view that focuses more broadly on social justice. The concluding section identifies four areas where social epidemiologists, practitioners of social medicine, and health and human rights advocates can and must work together in order to make progress on health and health equity.Item LINKING INTERATIONAL RESEARCH TO GLOBAL HEALTH EQUITY: THE LIMITED CONTRIBUTION OF BIOETHICS(2011) PRATT, BRIDGET; LOFF, BEBEAbstract available at publisher's website.Item Accessibility: Global Gateway to Health Literacy(2010) Perlow, E.Abstract available at publisher's web site.Item Winning a Healthier Future: LGBT Communities in the Health Equity and Accountability Act(2011) Baker, KellanIn 1985, the groundbreaking “Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health” called the “tragic dilemma” of health disparities among minority communities “an affront to both our ideals and the ongoing genius of American medicine.” More than 25 years later, these disparities persist, even as recognition of their reach and efforts to eliminate them have grown. According to the recently introduced Health Equity and Accountability Act, “Health disparities are a function of not only access to health care, but also the social determinants of health—including the environment, the physical structure of communities, nutrition and food options, …Item Joint Center Submits Comments on Proposed HHS Race/Ethnicity Data Collection Standards(2011) Everett, Ralph B.From a health equity standpoint, one of the most important provisions of the Affordable Care Act is the requirement that all health and health care institutions that receive federal funds must collect data on the race, ethnicity, and primary language of the patients they serve. Having this information will allow policymakers, researchers, and advocates understand when, where, and under what circumstances health and health care inequities may occur. There is disagreement in the field, however, about how to collect this data, and even about what the terms "race" and "ethnicity" mean. In response to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' call for comments, the Joint Center prepared a letter to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius outlining some considerations for the collection of race and ethnicity dataItem National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity(2011) Beadle, Mirtha R.; Graham, Garth N.The National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity provides a common set of goals and objectives for public and private sector initiatives and partnerships to help racial and ethnic minorities -- and other underserved groups -- reach their full health potential. The strategy -- a product of the National Partnership for Action (NPA) -- incorporates ideas, suggestions and comments from thousands of individuals and organizations across the country. Local groups can use the National Stakeholder Strategy to identify which goals are most important for their communities and adopt the most effective strategies and action steps to help reach them.Item Health disparities and health equity: concepts and measurement.(2006) Braveman, PaulaThere is little consensus about the meaning of the terms "health disparities," "health inequalities," or "health equity." The definitions can have important practical consequences, determining the measurements that are monitored by governments and international agencies and the activities that will be supported by resources earmarked to address health disparities/inequalities or health equity. This paper aims to clarify the concepts of health disparities/inequalities (used interchangeably here) and health equity, focusing on the implications of different definitions for measurement and hence for accountability. Health disparities/inequalities do not refer to all differences in health. A health disparity/inequality is a particular type of difference in health (or in the most important influences on health that could potentially be shaped by policies); it is a difference in which disadvantaged social groups-such as the poor, racial/ethnic minorities, women, or other groups who have persistently experienced social disadvantage or discrimination-systematically experience worse health or greater health risks than more advantaged social groups. ("Social advantage" refers to one's relative position in a social hierarchy determined by wealth, power, and/or prestige.) Health disparities/inequalities include differences between the most advantaged group in a given category-e.g., the wealthiest, the most powerful racial/ethnic group-and all others, not only between the best- and worst-off groups. Pursuing health equity means pursuing the elimination of such health disparities/inequalities.Item Social conditions, health equity, and human rights.(2010) Braveman, PaulaThe fields of health equity and human rights have different languages, perspectives, and tools for action, yet they share several foundational concepts. This paper explores connections between human rights and health equity, focusing particularly on the implications of current knowledge of how social conditions may influence health and health inequalities, the metric by which health equity is assessed. The role of social conditions in health is explicitly addressed by both 1) the concept that health equity requires equity in social conditions, as well as in other modifiable determinants, of health; and 2) the right to a standard of living adequate for health. The indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights--civil and political as well as economic and social--together with the right to education, implicitly but unambiguously support the need to address the social (including political) determinants of health, thus contributing to the conceptual basis for health equity. The right to the highest attainable standard of health strengthens the concept and guides the measurement of health equity by implying that the reference group for equity comparisons should be one that has optimal conditions for health. The human rights principles of non-discrimination and equality also strengthen the conceptual foundation for health equity by identifying groups among whom inequalities in health status and health determinants (including social conditions) reflect a lack of health equity; and by construing discrimination to include not only intentional bias, but also actions with unintentionally discriminatory effects. In turn, health equity can make substantial contributions to human rights 1) insofar as research on health inequalities provides increasing understanding and empiric evidence of the importance of social conditions as determinants of health; and, more concretely, 2) by indicating how to operationalize the concept of the right to health for the purposes of measurement and accountability, which have been elusive. Human rights laws and principles and health equity concepts and technical approaches can be powerful tools for mutual strengthening, not only by contributing toward building awareness and consensus around shared values, but also by guiding analysis and strengthening measurement of both human rights and health equity.Item The social determinants of health, health equity, and human rights.(2010) Chapman, Audrey RThis article explores the benefits of a rights-based approach to health according greater attention to the social determinants of health, health equity, and the power structure. It uses the report issued by the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), "Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health," as a lens through which to address these issues. After presenting a brief overview of the CSDH report, the article compares the document with a rights-based approach to health on three topics: 1) the social determinants of health and the underlying determinants of health; 2) health inequalities and inequities; and 3) power, money, and resources. The article argues that the right to health requires greater attention to the social determinants of health, health inequalities, and power dynamics than these topics have received to date.