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Inside this issue:

      This update of Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity, and Medical Care, like its predecessors, is intended to serve as a quick reference source on the health, health insurance coverage, access and quality of health care of racial and ethnic groups in the United States.  The document highlights some of the best available data and research in these areas.

 

      Since the first edition of Key Facts in 1999, the issue of racial/ethnic disparities in health care has received a significant level of attention.  The Institute of Medicine released Unequal Treatment in 2002 summarizing the research to date on racial and ethnic disparities in health care and offering guidance as to what questions remained unanswered and what information was needed to answer those questions.  The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released the first National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) in 2003.  The report, which is issued annually by AHRQ, provides a comprehensive review of disparities in health care among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups in the United States. 

 

     As more information has become available on health care disparities, the focus of research has turned from documenting disparities to trying to understand their causes and developing interventions to alleviate them.  This is not to say that documentation of the problem is no longer needed.  Data are still limited for some racial and ethnic subgroups, and for individuals who self-identify with more than one racial group.  As such, information that documents health care disparities is important to understanding where progress has been made and the challenges that remain.

 

      This version of Key Facts, where possible, highlights data that show whether health care disparities are narrowing, widening, or persisting for specific racial/ethnic groups and presents newly collected data for people who identify with more than one racial group.  Key Facts is divided into six sections:

- Section 1 begins with an overview of the demographic characteristics of the U.S. population.

-  Section 2 presents health measures, stratified when possible by a measure of socioeconomic status. 

-  Section 3 profiles patterns of health insurance coverage.

-  Section 4 offers a picture of the data as they relate to preventive and primary care.

-  Section 5 focuses on three medical conditions: diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and asthma. 

-  Finally, Section 6 presents findings from the 2005 NHDR that are useful in tracking national changes in health care disparities over time.

 

To access the report visit http://www.kff.org/minorityhealth/6069.cfm

 

March 2007   Issue #9  

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