Approaches to Eliminating Sociocultural Disparities in Health

The recent flurry of studies documenting the presence of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health care and health have outpaced articles that describe effective strategies to eliminate disparities. Through literature review and informal interviews with research, policy, and program experts, we developed a framework of programs that address disparities through targeting clinicians, patients and communities, and health systems. We found that the lack of technical expertise, resources, and sensitive tools are all common barriers to evaluating programs. To stimulate more effective programs and rigorous evaluations, we describe specialized implementation and evaluation techniques programs can use, and make recommendations for future efforts.