BACKGROUND Research on racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States requires that self-report measures, developed primarily in mainstream samples, are appropriate when applied in diverse groups. To compare groups, mean scores must reflect true scores and have minimal bias, assumptions that have not been tested for many self-report measures used in this research. OBJECTIVE To iden...

INTRODUCTION The ability to track improvement against racial/ethnic disparities in mental health care is hindered by the varying methods and disparity definitions used in previous research. DATA Nationally representative sample of whites, blacks, and Latinos from the 2002 to 2006 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Dependent variables are total, outpatient, and prescription drug mental health c...

OBJECTIVE To assess health care disparities among black and Latino adults with schizophrenia receiving services during the period July 1994-June 2006, and to evaluate trends in observed disparities. DATA SOURCES Administrative claims data from the Florida Medicaid program. Data sources included membership files (demographic information), medical claims (diagnostic, service, and expenditure in...

Although research on health disparities has been prioritized by the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine, and Healthy People 2010, little has been published that examines the biology underlying health disparities. Allostatic load is a multisystem construct theorized to quantify stress-induced biological risk. Differences in allostatic load may reflect differences in stress e...

In the fall 2010, East Carolina University's Department of Public Health in the Brody School of Medicine introduced a new graduate certificate online program to its curriculum-the Ethnic and Rural Health Disparities (ERHD) program. By the spring 2014, the Ethnic and Rural Health Disparities (ERHD) program graduated 20 public health professionals with expertise in ethnic and rural health dispari...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supports 40 Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH 2010) community coalitions in designing, implementing, and evaluating community-driven strategies to eliminate health disparities in racial and ethnic groups. The REACH 2010 logic model was developed to assist grantees in identifying, documenting, and evaluating local attribu...

Mycosis fungoides, the most common form of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, has a higher incidence and poorer prognosis in African-Americans. The factors that may be contributing to this disparity are presented in the context of a health disparities framework that includes discussion of patient-related factors such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and biological differences, provider-related ...

Achieving health equity, driven by the elimination of health disparities, is a goal of Healthy People 2020. In recent decades, the improvement in health status has been remarkable for the U.S. population as a whole. However, racial and ethnic minority populations continue to lag behind whites with a quality of life diminished by illness from preventable chronic diseases and a life span cut shor...