The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report last week, titled Health Disparities and Inequalities Report - United States, 2013, examining the key factors that affect health across the population and lead to health disparities throughout the United States. The report is the second of a series looking at health disparities and inequalities, the first of which was published in 2011 (click here to download the 2011 report). The CDC looks at health disparities across a range of groups, including racial, ethnic, sex, geographic, and socioeconomic. In the pursuit of health equity, the CDC works with its partners to both identify and address the factors that propagate health disparities across these groups with the ultimate aim of improving the health of all.
In the report's foreword, authored by Thomas R. Frieden, Director of the CDC, Frieden lays out some historical context of the effort to eradicate health disparities in the United States. In doing so, Frieden evokes the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. said that "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane" (9). Nearly a half century after Reverend King made this observation, we have made some but not nearly enough progress in reducing the barriers to equitable health care and to health equity. We should work with what he called "the fierce urgency of now" to eliminate this form of inequality wherever and whoever it affects.
To be certain, signficant progress made in the United States over the past 50 years in the broad realm of public health, progress that is represented by the nearly 10 year increase in life expectancy, from less than 70 years in 1960 to approximately 79 years today. While the public health gains of the past half century are remarkable and rather indisputable, they lack in comparison to gains made elsewhere throughout the world and have not been experienced equally throughout the U.S. population. The 79 year life expectancy places the United States 33rd globally, and within the U.S., life expectancy varies by race, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, and geographic location. The graph below, from the report, illustrates the race and sex disparities in "expected (at birth) years free of activity limitations caused by chronic conditions", as well as the progress that was made between 1999 and 2008 in reducing the disparities.
How can health disparities be reduced? What is being done?
The National Prevention Council, which receives scientific and technical support from CDC, developed the National Prevention Strategy (NPS). The elimination of health disparities is one of the four strategic directions of the NPS, and it has produced five recommended approaches towards reducing health disparities:
- Focus on communities at greatest risk
- Increase access to quality health care
- Increase workforce capacity to address disparities
- Support research to identify effective strategies to eliminate disparities
- Standardize and collect data to better identify and address disparities
Partners for Livable Communities is taking on the challenge of reducing health disparities as well. Through Creating the Healthy Community, Partners is preparing to work with a network of communities across the United States to design and implement a plan to address a public health issue, targeted at one of three population groups: 1) at-risk youth, 2) individuals and families living in poverty, and 3) the vulnerable elderly.
Click here to learn more about Partners' foray into the field of public health.