Federal health officials unveiled a blueprint on Friday to help narrow racial disparities in care, including efforts to expand insurance coverage, improve access, shore up the clinical workforce, and remove cultural barriers that have combined to produce spotty care.
Racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to get the preventive care they need to stay healthy and more likely to suffer from serious illnesses such as diabetes, HIV AIDS, hypertension, and heart disease, HHS data show. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that two of five Latinos, and one of five blacks, lack insurance.
“We know that the health of an individual is almost inseparable from the health of the larger community,” HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh told a news conference. “We also know that health depends on much more than what happens in the doctor’s office.”
The plan uses the new health care law to help reduce some of these disparities. “Action steps include expanding insurance coverage, increasing access to care through development of new service-delivery sites, and introducing quality initiatives such as increased utilization of medical homes,” HHS says in a statement.
Koh called the HHS road map “the most comprehensive federal effort to eliminate the disparities that exist among racial and ethnic populations.” The disparities have been clearly documented.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has found that about 30 percent of Hispanics and 20 percent of African-Americans have no steady source of health care, compared with 16 percent of whites. In treatments for serious illnesses, minorities constantly lag behind whites. Blacks are one-third less likely to have bypass surgery than whites; much less likely to receive children’s medications for asthma; and more likely to be uninsured.
And the minority population is growing, according to recent Census Bureau data.
This initiative launches at a dicey time in Washington, however. The fight against health inequity has been a stop and go—and stop again—effort since the 1980s. Improved care for minorities has garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans over the years, but funding too often becomes collateral damage in budget fights.
“The wheels of progress are slow,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a longtime advocate of improved minority health, said on Friday. “Oftentimes, we get frustrated and say, when will this get done?’”
Lee, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, acknowledged that the current budget battles could again threaten the effort. “We’re under siege, and we got to make sure [the programs] are fully funded,” she said. “We cannot allow this current debate on the deficit to be used as an excuse to not fund what we need to fund.”
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