Racial health care disparities persist in every state in the country despite two decades of efforts to improve health outcomes for minorities, according to a new report released Wednesday.
Thereportof the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that structural racism and people’s living environments have contributed to poorer health outcomes for minorities.
Wednesday’s 300-page report comes 21 years after the organization’s first.
“When the Institute of Medicine (now called the National Academy of Medicine) announced its milestone Unfair treatment report from 2002, we shed light on the fact that your race can determine the quality of care you receive,” said Victor J. Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine, in a statement.
“Twenty years later, it is clear that our nation has not made enough progress. There are still major inequalities inherent in the healthcare system,” Dzau continued. “It is imperative that we achieve health equity for all by committing to pursuing and implementing the goals and actions set out in this new report.”
The report shows that racial and ethnic minorities are significantly less likely to receive primary care. During emergency department visits, minorities experience longer wait times and receive fewer acute triage severity scores. Long-term care facilities that serve minority residents provide fewer clinical services and have lower staffing levels.
In an analysis of diabetes, that report found that non-white patients are less likely to receive newer, more expensive medications and diabetes technology. Black patients with diabetes experience hospitalization rates that are more than 2.5 times higher than those for white patients.
The report offers actions the federal government can take to close gaps in health care.
One action is to report data on the disparities. The report calls on the Office of Management and Budget to aggressively enforce requirements for routine collection of data on race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation and language by all federal health care agencies and research programs.
The report also urges the National Institutes of Health and other research funders to expand funding for research aimed at addressing health care disparities, structural racism, and health-related social needs.
The report calls on Congress and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to empower the Office for Civil Rights to enforce the Affordable Care Act’s ban on discrimination in health care programs.
And, the report concludes, Congress should chart a path to affordable, comprehensive health insurance for all.
“Eliminating health care disparities is an achievable and achievable goal, and improving the health of individuals in the nation’s most underserved communities improves the quality of care for all,” said Georges C. Benjamin, co-chair of the committee that wrote the report. and executive director of the American Public Health Association. “This is not a zero-sum game; we are all in this together.”
