Monthly Archive for October 2008
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October 31, 2008
Health and Educational Disparities in Autism: A Call for Action
The Center for Reducing Health Disparities along with the Cleveland State Center for Health Equity will host Nabil El-Ghoroury, PhD, Pediatric Psychologist at MetroHealth Medical Center and Senior Instructor in Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University.
The title of his talk will be Health and Educational Disparities in Autism: A Call for Action. The lecture will take place on November 14 from 3:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. in R240 of the Rammelkamp Building at MetroHealth Medical Center. There is no fee and your parking will be validated.
To RSVP, please email or call Michele Abraham at mep2@case.edu or 216-778-3858.
Posted by: Staff on October 31, 2008
Category: Autism; Health Disparities; Health Inequities; Works in Progress
links for 2008-10-31
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A study surveying patients in more than 1,500 physician practices has found racial and ethnic disparities in patient experiences, with minority patients having worse experiences than white patients. The findings suggest that while all doctors should be attentive to differences in patient experiences, Hispanic, Native American, and black patients are often visiting physician practices that are less patient-centered.
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The investigators found that Black Canadians were significantly less likely than Caucasians to receive a kidney transplant, either from deceased or living donors. This situation mimics that seen in the United States. However, unlike African-Americans, Black Canadians who underwent a kidney transplant experienced no significant health differences compared with Caucasians after their procedure. Their transplanted kidneys survived just as long as kidneys transplanted into Caucasians, and Black Canadians actually survived longer following the surgery compared with Caucasians.
Posted by: Staff on October 31, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 30, 2008
links for 2008-10-30
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Opponents say the measure could have unintended consequences, including driving up Medicaid costs. Supporters say it will keep the state from encroaching on the private sector.
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Chinese AIDS victims are dying needlessly because a "tragic stigma" prevents them seeking help in a country where one fifth of people think the disease can be passed on by sharing a toilet, a top activist said on Thursday.
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Our recent study of income-related inequalities in limiting long-term illness found the least generous Anglo-Saxon welfare states, England and Ireland, exhibited the largest health inequalities.
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Striking new evidence has emerged of a widespread gap in the cost of health insurance, as women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage, according to new data from insurance companies and online brokers.
Posted by: Staff on October 30, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 29, 2008
links for 2008-10-29
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Roughly 2,000 times over the last 17 years, Marguerita Toribio, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, has climbed into a cushioned recliner for the three-hour dialysis treatment that keeps her alive.
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The bells and whistles include discounts for fitness club memberships, coverage of acupuncture and 24-hour health information lines. Prices can vary, depending on a person’s medical history and state rules.
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Doctors subconsciously favor whites over blacks, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a finding that may explain widespread racial disparities in health care in the United States.
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In a study conducted in Florida, researchers found that drugstores in the poorest areas charge more, on average, for four widely used prescription medications than do pharmacies in wealthier neighborhoods.
Posted by: Staff on October 29, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Who pays for the care of illegal immigrants?
A recent latimes.com story chronicles the disparity in access to health care for some illegal immigrants.
The kidney failed when [Marguerita Toribio] briefly moved to North Carolina, which refused to pay for her anti-rejection drugs. She needed to go back on dialysis three days a week to clear toxins from her blood, but North Carolina didn't cover that either.
The best a social worker could offer was a prepaid plane ticket back to California.
Health services and other benefits available to illegal immigrants can vary by the state. Welfare, prenatal care or in-state college tuition might be available in one place and inaccessible across a state line.
Many states draw the line at illegal immigrants. But officials in California, New York and a few other states figure that not treating patients whose kidneys are failing costs more.
That is because patients without regular dialysis frequently end up in emergency rooms, on the brink of death. At that point, federal law requires that they receive dialysis until they are stable enough to be released -- usually only to deteriorate again within weeks and return to the ER.
Be sure to read the full article over at latimes.com.
Posted by: Staff on October 29, 2008
Category: Dialysis; Health Disparities; Health Inequities; Immigrant Health
October 24, 2008
links for 2008-10-24
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Faced with a projected $500-million deficit this coming year, Ontario's finance minister announced that it will slow down the hiring of 9,000 nurses in order to save $50 million.
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"The Cure," written and directed by student Anthony Onah. It's about a single mother whose young son is injured in an accident while she is at work. The family has no insurance, pulling them into an insurance nightmare almost as bad as the child's physical nightmare.
Posted by: Staff on October 24, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 23, 2008
links for 2008-10-23
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Violent deaths among blacks in the nation’s capital have become a public health epidemic, with murder ranking as the leading cause of years of potential life lost for black men in D.C., according to a study released today by Public Citizen.
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PloS Medicine -- an open-access journal -- published an essay suggesting that current publication methods depict a false portrayal of scientific progress through pumped up results.
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The most recent breast cancer statistics for the St. Louis area tell two different tales. While there is a lot of good news in the numbers; there is some bad news as well n when looking at all races combined we see that deaths from breast cancer are higher for the city than for both the state and the US. And driving much of these numbers seems to be a growing disparity between African American women and white women.
Posted by: Staff on October 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 22, 2008
links for 2008-10-22
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In 1980, black women and white women in Chicago with breast cancer were equally likely to die. Since then, death rates for white patients have improved dramatically. But that is not the case for their African-American counterparts, who are now dying at a rate 116 percent higher, according to data released Wednesday by the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force.
Posted by: Staff on October 22, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 21, 2008
links for 2008-10-21
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When non-Hispanic whites and African Americans live in similar social settings, their health outcomes are much more similar than those found in national samples.
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Why market based insurance is bad.
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Whether you survive after a serious accident may depend on your race and your health insurance, a new study concludes.
Posted by: Staff on October 21, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 20, 2008
links for 2008-10-20
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Chris Seper wraps up the week's top stories.
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The Chinese government, recognising the disparities in access to healthcare between the urban rich and rural poor, is planning to overhaul the world's largest health system.
Posted by: Staff on October 20, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
China to return to universal health care
We have blogged before (here and here) about the declining access to health care in China due mostly to a shift in responsibility from the central government to the provincial governments. Since health care was paid for by tax dollars wealthy provinces got more care.
It seems that China is planning to reverse course and move towards universal health care.
From newscientist.com:
The Chinese government, recognising the disparities in access to healthcare between the urban rich and rural poor, is planning to overhaul the world's largest health system. The plan, entitled "Healthy China 2020", aims to restore universal access to primary healthcare by 2010.
The Healthy China 2020 initiative was announced by the government about two months ago. "It will involve about 200 medical experts divided into seven special programmes," says Shanlian Hu of Fudan University in Shanghai, and author of a paper summarising the negative impacts of the free-market reforms.
The priority is to reverse the huge disparities in access to health, particularly between urban and rural populations.
Another big focus will be on prevention rather than treatment. Already, the government has vowed to restore universal access to primary healthcare within two years, And to prevent the scandal of doctors prescribing unnecessarily expensive treatments, the government will foot the drug bill and dictate which drugs are dispensed.
UPDATE: iht.com and ajfortin.com have more information on the topic.
Posted by: Staff on October 20, 2008
Category: Access to Health Care; China; Health Disparities; Health Inequities; Universal Health Care
October 17, 2008
links for 2008-10-17
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For an employed individual carrying a family policy with her employer, premiums have risen five time faster than earnings. And that rise has claimed much of California workers' meager pay hikes since 2000.
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The credit crunch may have been the last straw for a failing Chicago hospital that said yesterday it was closing its doors.
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The MetroHealth System will cancel its contract with one of the only two Medicaid managed care companies available in Northeast Ohio, a move that could force more than 4,000 patients to get new doctors.
Posted by: Staff on October 17, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 16, 2008
links for 2008-10-16
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In California, the fight is over balance billing patients who go to emergency rooms at hospitals that aren’t in their insurer’s network. Predictably enough, the insurers argue that the hospitals charge inflated rates for these patients, while the hospitals say the insurers only pay a pittance.
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Infant mortality in the United States remains higher than in many other industrialized countries, with progress stalling this decade, the U.S. government said on Wednesday.
Posted by: Staff on October 16, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Health disparities in Baltimore
A story that appears online at the Baltimore Sun reports on a 20-year gap in life expectancy between wealthy and poor areas:
The two-decade difference in life expectancy between Hollins Market and Roland Park was revealed in data released yesterday by the city Health Department, which for the first time has compiled comprehensive death data on a neighborhood level.
The results are striking. In some impoverished neighborhoods, the death rates from heart disease and stroke are more than twice as high as in wealthier places just a few blocks or miles away. At the extreme, the difference in mortality rates between some neighborhoods is as wide as the disparity in life expectancy between the United States and a Third World nation such as Burma.
Posted by: Staff on October 16, 2008
Category: Health Disparities; Health Inequities; Social Determinants of Health
October 15, 2008
links for 2008-10-15
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The World Health Organization is urging governments to adopt primary health care and universal coverage as the best ways of improving health and saving lives.
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An e-mail survey of 1,767 adults currently being treated for cancer found 569 respondents with late-stage cancer. Of those, 12% said they passed up recommended treatment because it was too expensive.
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More than 20 Chicago medical and public health organizations came together to provide an interactive approach to the health disparity problem in the city. They were taught to pay more attention to cultural influences on health, low levels of health literacy in the public and how even the smallest of biases can affect quality of care.
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Under new state rules that take effect today, hospitals and physicians are barred from billing patients for the balance of emergency care not covered by insurers.
Posted by: Staff on October 15, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
October 14, 2008
links for 2008-10-14
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Chris Seper wraps up the previous week's health stories.
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Falling tax revenues and higher enrollment in Medicaid programs are putting pressure on state budgets that could hit doctors' pocketbooks.
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Fully one-third of children in the poorer families are in less-than-optimal health, and are five times more likely to be worse off than wealthier kids. In middle-class families, children were 1.5 times more likely to be in less-than-optimal health than in wealthy families.
Posted by: Staff on October 14, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Meredith Minkler Lecture
Nationally reknown scholar Meredith Minkler, DrPH, MPH will present “Collaborative Research with Communities: Challenges and Opportunities for Addressing Health Disparities” in room R240 of the Rammelkamp Building at MetroHealth Medical Center on October 15 at 12:30 p.m.
Dr. Minkler is Professor and Director of Health and Social Behavior at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkley. She has 30 years experience in community partnerships, community based participatory research and work with diverse community groups. She has published over 100 articles, peer-reviewed journals and 7 books. Please RSVP to Ayella Shams at 216-778-8481 or ashams@metrohealth.org.
Posted by: Staff on October 14, 2008
Category: Health Disparities; Heath Inequities
Report finds significant child health disparities
Ohio Health Policy is reporting on a new by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:
"The bad news is that we have these very large gaps, which can be thought of as shortfalls in the health potential of our children," said lead author Dr. Paula Braveman. "But the patterns we see tell us that these gaps are fixable if we as a society put our will to the task."
The Health Care Blog has an excellent write up on the topic.
You can find the study at rwjf.org.
Posted by: Staff on October 14, 2008
Category: Health Care; Health Disparities; Health Inequities; children
October 09, 2008
links for 2008-10-09
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The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company.
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Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine has received a $14.5 million grant to fund the Center for Research to Evaluate and Eliminate Dental Disparities until 2015.
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In 1960, the U.S. ranked 11th in the world in infant mortality rate. In 2004, it was 29th. Further, in 1960 white Americans on their own would have ranked 11th in the world in that category, while African Americans would have been 30th. In 2004, white Americans would have ranked 26th, while African Americans had fallen to 35th.
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Three men who say they have adequate health coverage and enough money to pay for their health care needs want to opt out of hospital coverage under Medicare. Federal rules say they cannot collect Social Security benefits if they do that.
Posted by: Staff on October 09, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
JAMA reports on racial disparities in breast cancer treatment
From JAMA:
A recent analysis presented at the symposium by researchers at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston revealed that black women are less likely than white women to receive radiation therapy after lumpectomy, which is the standard of care. The study, which is the first to look at radiation therapy rates on a national scale and to compare differences among US regions, also showed that radiation rates after lumpectomy in general are lower than they should be.
Another study sought to identify the reasons for higher mastectomy rates in rural areas. A long-held belief is that mastectomies are more common among women who live in rural areas because they do not have the same access to postlumpectomy radiation therapy as urban women. However, this study found that women in rural and urban areas have equivalent rates of radiation therapy following breast cancer surgery.
Posted by: Staff on October 09, 2008
Category: Breast Cancer; Health Care; Health Disparities; Health Inequities
October 08, 2008
links for 2008-10-08
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Universal health care is, however, a moral obligation for an industrialized society, and will not result in the apocalyptic consequences promised by the jeremiads.
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Survival after a head and neck cancer diagnosis lags for African-Americans and the poor, researchers here said.
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Discussing the disparity between mental health care and general medicine in the country, Duckworth said the bias against mental illness goes beyond the institutions — hospitals, insurance companies, states — and encompasses society.
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The statistics are startling: One out of every 166 children nationwide has some form of autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Asthma patients who are black tend to have more severe disease than asthma patients who are white, leading to more asthma control problems, higher rates of emergency department visits, and overall worse quality of life.
Posted by: Staff on October 08, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
African Americans have a dramatically worse prognosis for head and neck cancer
In a study published this week in the journal Cancer researchers report that African-Americans with head and neck cancers have a shorter survival time than whites (21 months vs. 40 months) and that the difference "is not explained completely by demographics, comorbid conditions, or undertreatment because poor outcomes continued to be observed after correcting for these factors. Earlier diagnosis, particularly in those from low SES groups and among AA patients, is needed to improve outcomes."
MedPage Today has a good review of the article.
Posted by: Staff on October 08, 2008
Category: African-American Health; Cancer; Head and Neck; Health Disparities; Heath Inequities
October 06, 2008
links for 2008-10-06
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Sen. Barack Obama’s attack on health insurance reforms proposed by Sen. John McCain shows that Obama’s not for real change in health insurance.
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During 2004-2006, an estimated 20% of US adults, or 1 in 5 people, had some level of disability and these individuals -- particularly individuals from certain minority groups
Posted by: Staff on October 06, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Minorities with disabilities suffer most
From Reuters:
During 2004-2006, an estimated 20% of US adults, or 1 in 5 people, had some level of disability and these individuals -- particularly individuals from certain minority groups -- were much more likely to rate their health as fair or poor compared with persons without a disability.
Black, Hispanic and Native Americans with a disability reported fair or poor health at disproportionately higher rates than White and Asian Americans, health officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday in the agency's weekly report on illness and death.
The full report can be found at MMWR.
Posted by: Staff on October 06, 2008
Category: Access to Health Care; Disabilities; Healthcare; Heath Inequities
October 03, 2008
links for 2008-10-03
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There wasn’t a lot said about health care in last night’s vice presidential debate. But there was just enough to give each candidate the opportunity to slam the other ticket’s health plan.
Posted by: Staff on October 03, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Health disparities in Erie PA
From GoErie.com:
In 2000, the study reported, Erie County's population was 93.6 percent caucasian, 6.1 percent black and 2.2 percent Hispanic. Yet the poverty rate for children under 18 was 46.6 percent for the black population, compared with 11.4 percent for whites. Erie County's poverty rate for children was higher than both the Pennsylvania and national rates.
The percentage of births to single women and to teens (including young teens) in the black community in Erie was also considerably higher when compared with the majority population. The percentage of females who received prenatal care was lower for black women than for whites in Erie County. The mortality rate for black babies was also higher compared to white babies.
Those statistics pointed to a gap in health care from the very start of life.
Posted by: Staff on October 03, 2008
Category: Health Disparities; Heath Inequities
October 02, 2008
links for 2008-10-02
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A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a lower court ruling that San Francisco’s universal health care program violates federal law
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More than half the children in some parts of Barnet borough are living in or on the brink of poverty, a report revealed this week.
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Consider, for example, the fact that most hospitals and health systems have remained in the black only as a result of investment income. Many lose money on operations. How will health systems remain afloat if the returns on their investments are diminished?
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Black and Hispanic adults who are terminally ill are less likely than their white counterparts to have a plan in place for end-of-life care, a new study suggests.
Posted by: Staff on October 02, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading