Solutions to health care disparities: moving beyond documentation of differences
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Research insights
- Contributor(s):
- Katz, Sarah J. AcademyHealth.
- Publication:
- [Washington, D.C.] : AcademyHealth, [2011]
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Healthcare Disparities Continental Population Groups Culture Diabetes Mellitus -- therapy Documentation Ethnic Groups Medical Informatics Pilot Projects Premature Birth -- prevention & control Quality of Health Care Humans United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- In the context of health care, the term "disparities" refers to significant differences between one population and another in terms of the rate of disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality, or survival rates. Disparities in health care are differences in the quality of care patients receive based on their race and ethnicity, even when they have health insurance. The research community has thoroughly documented the existence of racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care in the United States. Experts in the field are now concerned with moving from documentation of differences toward efforts to actually eliminate disparities in health care. Three recent examples illustrate potential strategies for reducing disparities. These interventions targeted specific disparities in three areas--premature birth, diabetes care, and physician service quality. Analysis of these interventions suggests that they all share certain elements in common. They contained multiple components to target different points in the health care system, they were culturally appropriate, and they made extensive use of data from health information technology (HIT) to identify characteristics of individuals affected by disparities and to allow successful interventions to be replicable. Moving forward with disparities reduction and addressing barriers on a national level will require engagement from the research community and leaders of health care systems.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101589993 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101589993