February 27, 2008
Health Disparities Not Inevitable
From the Harvard School of Public Health:
...researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that, as overall health improved (as measured by a decline in mortality rates), inequities in health both shrank and widened between 1960 and 2002. The study demonstrates that the recent trend of growing U.S. disparities in health status is not inevitable.
The study reports that disparities in premature mortality rates declined from 1960 to 1980 while overall premature mortality rates shrank. This shows that health inequities can decline while overall health improves.
However, gaps in premature mortality rates widened from 1980 to 2002 while overall premature mortality rates continued to decline.
From the discussion section of the article:
What our results newly underscore is that contemporary US inequities are not immutable. Comparing the results for 1966–1980 versus 1981–2002, the trends in the former timeframe give grounds for hope; the latter augur poorly for the Healthy People 2010 objective of eliminating US socioeconomic and racial/ethnic health disparities.
The full study can be found free and online at PLoS Medicine.