he current debate about health care reform has centered primarily on controlling the cost of health care and health insurance access. The third essential component of health policy — health care quality — must be addressed as well. Despite a lack of media attention, health care quality initiatives are significant components of health care reform. However, racial and ethnic health care dispariti...

OBJECTIVE To assess the magnitude of socio-economic disparities in health system responsiveness in India after correcting for potential reporting heterogeneity by socio-economic characteristics (education and wealth). METHODS Data from Wave 1 of the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (2007-2008) involving six Indian states were used. Seven health system responsiveness domains were consid...

Background and purpose: Health indices, regarding to their role in the development of society, are one of the most important indices at national level. Success of national development programs is largely dependent on the establishment of appropriate goals at the health sector, among which access to healthcare facilities is an essential requirement. The aim of this study was to examine the dispa...

CONTEXT Access to high quality primary care was identified by Healthy People 2010 as one of the mechanisms through which racial and ethnic disparities in health might be reduced. Despite the well-established connections between good primary care and health, the scientific evidence on whether good primary care can reduce racial disparities in health is sparse. OBJECTIVE To examine whether bett...

INTRODUCTION Few studies have evaluated possible racial/ethnic disparities in chronic disease prevalence among US Air Force active-duty members. Because members have equal access to free health care and preventive screening, the presence of health disparities in this population could offer new insight into the source of these disparities. Our objective was to identify whether the prevalence of ...

The persistence of the black health disadvantage has been a puzzling component of health in the United States in spite of general declines in rates of morbidity and mortality over the past century. Studies that have focused on well-established individual-level determinants of health such as socio-economic status and health behaviors have been unable to fully explain these disparities. Recent re...

Massachusetts is in the midst of a demographic shift that will leave the state with unprecedented ethnic, racial and cultural diversity. In light of this change, health care services in the Commonwealth need to respond to and serve an increasingly multicultural population. The time is now for bold initiatives to reduce behavioral health and health service disparities by building collaborations ...

OBJECTIVE The objective of our study of oral health disparities in Appalachia was to use existing data sources to geographically analyze suspected disparities in oral health status in the 420 counties of Appalachia, and to make sub-state comparisons within Appalachia and to the rest of the nation. The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the methods used to overcome challenges associated w...

We thank Dr. Hicken for her commentary (1) on our article regarding disparities in the distributions of blood pressure across racial/ethnic groups in the United States (2). She correctly places our results, which largely show that proximate risk factors are inadequate to explain disparities, in the context of a larger body of literature that suggests that broader social determinants of health m...