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.