Health Disparities

Introduction Despite the significant role that power asymmetries play in driving health inequities, there is a dearth of research on the intersection of power, racism, and health equity. In this article, Michener argues that housing is a driver of racial health inequity and that tenants play a significant and overlooked role in combating health-threatening housing…

Introduction This article introduces a framework called the Policy Equity Assessment that was designed for policy analysts and researchers to assess a policy’s or program’s ability to reduce inequities. This framework couples policy analysis approaches with rigorous equity-focused research methods. This combination allows for a more comprehensive equity analysis compared to other research methods. This…

Introduction For Americans, the murder of George Floyd marked 2020 as the year of the “racial awakening” in the United States. Largely led by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, protests and calls for racial justice spread across the country and inevitably reached medical institutions too. In collaboration with White Coats for Black Lives—a national…

Introduction This study seeks to understand the best ways to address racial and ethnic disparities within healthcare institutions, with a particular focus on organization management. The study draws upon learnings from the Disparities Solution Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and specifically references data produced from the Disparities Leadership Program (DLP) that began in 2007. The…

Introduction Racism in healthcare settings is a persistent and complex problem for both healthcare delivery and access to health services. Over the past decade, several publications demonstrate the experiences of racism faced by minoritized patients such as the enduring racist assumptions about pain tolerance of Black people, the low propensity for screening Black women for…

Introduction This cohort study aims to identify, address and quantify the relationship between longevity ( “all cause mortality”) and wealth as it relates to Black individuals versus white individuals. Furthermore, the study then models how reparations payments to the black community could potentially affect the longevity ( “all cause mortality”) gap between Blacks and whites.…

Organizations can do more than report health disparities by integrating interventions to reduce disparities into their quality improvement processes. Introduction In this special symposium, the authors report findings from Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This project investigated and evaluated interventions to reduce racial and ethnic…

Introduction The Black Lives Matter movement has put the spotlight on the costly impact of racism on Black lives and led to a growing recognition that racism has a structural basis and is embedded in long-standing social policy. Racism is not ahistorical and neither are U.S. health care and public health institutions and practices. Drs.…

Introduction Cities are important ecosystems shaped by dynamic and interdependent biological, physical and social influences. However, Schell et al. note that few studies link research on urban ecological and evolutionary studies to that of social inequality. They argue it is integral to integrate these disciplines as human-created systems of power create uneven impacts on non-human…

Introduction Despite the demonstrated benefits of preventive medicine, only 45% of American adults typically get a flu shot during flu season. Vaccine hesitancy is particularly common among Black and white lower socioeconomic status men, who don’t trust doctors and are skeptical of the benefits relative to the perceived risk. For Black Americans, this mistrust is…