Health disparities are a major public health problem in the United States. Doctorally prepared nurse scholars, who understand factors contributing to these disparities, possess research competence to study these factors, and pose strategies to be tested are essential to improve the health of these vulnerable populations. This article describes how a PhD curriculum was designed to prepare teache...

OBJECTIVES Eliminating health disparities is a goal of Healthy People 2010. In order to track progress toward this goal, we need improved methods for measuring disparity. The authors present the Index of Disparity (ID) as a summary measure of disparity. METHODS The ID, a modified coefficient of variation, was used to measure disparity across populations defined on the basis of race/ethnicity,...

CONTEXT Racial and ethnic disparities in the quality of health care are well documented in the U.S. health care system. Reducing these disparities requires action by health care organizations. Collecting accurate data from patients about their race and ethnicity is an essential first step for health care organizations to take such action, but these data are not systematically collected and used...

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care is serving as a catalyst for the medical profession to re-examine the manner in which its institutions and training programs relate to cultural competence. This report found that racial and ethnic disparities exist in health care and that a lack of access to care does not fully exp...

Reproductive health disparities-particularly those experienced by racial and ethnic minority groups-are considered a persistent public health issue in the United States. Frameworks that focus on social determinants of health seek to identify the forces producing these disparities, particularly social conditions that create vulnerability to premature death and disease. Such frameworks pose chall...

To summarize, ethnic and social class disparities are evident across a spectrum of markers of psychological, behavioral, and physical health. Furthermore, the pattern is often complex such that disparities are sometimes found within ethnic/racial groups as well as across those groups. Indeed, it is likely that the causes of health disparities may be different across specific subgroups. Moreover...