Topic Page for Heath Inequities
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.
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Posted by: David Porter on October 08, 2008
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Category: African-American Health; Cancer; Head and Neck; Health Disparities; Heath Inequities
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.
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Posted by: David Porter on October 06, 2008
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Category: Access to Health Care; Disabilities; Health Disparities News; Healthcare; Heath Inequities
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.
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Posted by: David Porter on October 03, 2008
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Category: Health Disparities; Health Disparities News; Heath Inequities
Narrowing World Health Disparities
From Time.com:
On average, a black man living in Washington, D.C., does not live as long as a man in India, and he certainly doesn't live as long as a white man in his hometown. The reasons — just like the reasons that the Japanese and Swedes live longer than the Ukrainians, and why aborigines in Australia on average die 17 years earlier than non-aborigines — are almost entirely social, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) released today.
From the WHO press release:
A child born in a Glasgow, Scotland suburb can expect a life 28 years shorter than another living only 13 kilometres away. A girl in Lesotho is likely to live 42 years less than another in Japan. In Sweden, the risk of a woman dying during pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 17 400; in Afghanistan, the odds are 1 in 8. Biology does not explain any of this. Instead, the differences between - and within - countries result from the social environment where people are born, live, grow, work and age.
You can read the official news release from the WHO at their website as well as download the full report.
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Posted by: David Porter on August 29, 2008
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Category: Health Disparities Class; Heath Inequities; Social Determinants of Health
Hospital ready to deport comatose illegal immigrant
Earlier we posted about a hospital (Martin Memorial) who deported an illegal immigrant.
Now the Health Blog is reporting that a Chicago hospital is ready to deport an illegal immigrant who suffered a brain hemorrhage last month.
The Chicago Tribune has the full story. The issue at hand is summed up nicely by James Geraghty.
"It's important to make sure that hospitals aren't permitted to dump patients on an international level when they can't do it on a local level."
The practice of hospitals dumping patients has been in the news recently with the settlement of a suit where a Hollywood hospital dumped a paraplegic man on skid row.
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Posted by: David Porter on August 21, 2008
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Category: Heath Inequities; Immigrant Health
Money and beauty to the left - skin diseases and insurance to the right
From NYTimes.com:
Like airlines that offer first-class and coach sections, dermatology is fast becoming a two-tier business in which higher-paying customers often receive greater pampering. In some dermatologists’ offices, freer-spending cosmetic patients are given appointments more quickly than medical patients for whom health insurance pays fixed reimbursement fees.
A study published last year in The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that dermatologists in 11 American cities and one county offered faster appointments to a person calling about Botox than for someone calling about a changing mole, a possible sign of skin cancer.
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Posted by: David Porter on July 28, 2008
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Category: Health Care; Health Care; Health Disparities; Healthcare; Heath Inequities; Skin Cancer
Health Disparities and Hypertension.
John M. Flack, MD, MPH presenting at the Center for Reducing Health Disparities Research Festival. The symposium was held Septembr 2006.
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Posted by: David Porter on December 14, 2006
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Category: Audio / Video; Heath Inequities; hypertension