To address what they call persistent gender, racial, and ethnic bias in academia, scholars at Skidmore College and Yale and Leiden universities have recommended specific, rigorous interventions that lead to positive outcomes.
This year, Black History Month converges with the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement, and the nation's notable gains in equality give us much to celebrate. But equality in health and access to care continue to be areas of serious concern.
Skin cancer is often diagnosed at a more advanced stage in people of color, which can make it more difficult to treat. A new study provides recommendations for the prevention and early detection of skin cancer in people of color based on a comprehensive review of available data.
Two surprising risk factors – diminished lung function and low serum potassium levels - appear to have nearly the same impact as obesity in explaining why African-Americans are disproportionately prone to developing type 2 diabetes, researchers at Duke Medicine report.
African American women today are almost twice as likely to deliver a preterm baby as white, Hispanic or Asian women in the US - a disparity that medical conditions, socioeconomic status, access to prenatal care and health behaviors haven’t been able to fully account for. Two new studies explore the complex relationship between race, stress and inflammation and potential impacts on pregnancy in the hope of reducing preterm births and infant mortality, and improving maternal mental health.
Since the 1970s, the frequency and use of pain relief during childbirth – and most especially the use of epidural analgesia during labor – has increased dramatically. Reports on epidural rates range from 47 percent to as high as 76 percent of vaginal births, while between 39 percent and 56 percent of women use narcotic analgesics – including drugs like Fentanyl – via IV for managing labor and delivery pain. Only about 14 percent of women, the literature reveals, use no pharmacologic method to relieve childbirth pain.
Robust partnerships between rural community health education centers and academic health care institutions can make substantial strides toward addressing race-, income- and geographically-based health disparities in underserved communities by empowering both the community and leading University institutions.
Peter Rodriguez, senior associate dean for degree programs and chief diversity officer, addressed students, faculty and staff members who gathered at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business First Coffee celebration in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with these words:
A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that rural residents have experienced smaller gains in life expectancy than their urban counterparts and the gap continues to grow.
UT professor King Davis is leading a project to digitize and preserve records from the archive of the world’s first mental institution for African Americans.
African-American men incurred $341.8 billion in excess medical costs due to health inequalities between 2006 and 2009, and Hispanic men incurred an additional $115 billion over the four-year period, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study looks at the direct and indirect costs associated with health inequalities and projects the potential cost savings of eliminating these disparities for minority men in the U.S.
─ University of Washington researchers Grant H. Blume and Mark C. Long have produced the first empirical estimates using national-level data to show the extent to which levels of affirmative action in college admissions decisions changed during the period of 1992 to 2004. Blume and Long’s study, “Changes in Levels of Affirmative Action in College Admissions in Response to Statewide Bans and Judicial Rulings,” was recently published online in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
African American service members had higher incidence rates of hypertension compared to service members of other races and ethnicities despite equitable access to health care within the military health system, according to a new analysis by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC).
UCLA researchers have found that minority patients and those of lower socioeconomic status are far more likely to have advanced thyroid cancer when they are diagnosed with the disease than white patients and those in higher economic brackets. In one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, the UCLA team looked at nearly 26,000 patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer and analyzed the impact of race and socioeconomic factors on the stage of presentation, as well as patient survival rates. The study appears in the January issue of the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism.
As perceived by both patients and doctors, the cosmetic results after "lumpectomy" for breast cancer differ for African-American versus Caucasian women, suggests a pilot study in the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery—Global Open®, the official open-access medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
While weight loss surgery offers one of the best opportunities to improve health and reduce obesity related illnesses, the nearly 100,000 Americans who undergo bariatric surgery each year represent only a small fraction of people who are medically eligible for the procedure. Among those who have surgery, Caucasian Americans are twice as likely as African Americans to have weight loss surgery. On the surface, the data appear to signal racial disparity, but when researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center dug deeper to ask why this variation exists, the answer was more complicated.
Nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23, which can hurt their ability to find work, go to school and participate fully in their communities. A new study released Monday (Jan. 6) in the journal Crime & Delinquency provides the first contemporary findings on how the risk of arrest varies across race and gender.
Among Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, female, black, Asian and patients are substantially less likely to receive proven deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery to improve tremors and motor symptoms, according to a new report by a Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania researcher who identified considerable disparities among Medicare recipients receiving DBS for Parkinson's disease.
The poor and minorities tend to suffer from poor sleep and chronic disease more often, but sleep does not appear to be a root cause of disease disparity, finds a new study in Ethnicity & Disease.
Among African-American women with breast cancer, increased levels of the protein HSET were associated with worse breast cancer outcomes, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.
Diabetes was associated with an increased risk for developing a type of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma, and this association was highest for Latinos, followed by Hawaiians, African-Americans, and Japanese-Americans, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.
Researchers have uncovered a potential biological factor that may contribute to disparities in prostate cancer incidence and mortality between African-American and non-Hispanic white men in the United States, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.
Women with interruptions in health insurance coverage or with low income levels had a significantly increased likelihood of failing to receive breast cancer care that is in concordance with recommended treatment guidelines, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.
Certain genetic alterations to the PAX gene family may be responsible for survival disparities seen between African-American and non-Latino white men with head and neck cancer, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.
Despite working in more routine and less autonomous jobs, having fewer close friends at work, and feeling less supported by their coworkers, blacks report significantly more positive emotions in the workplace than whites, according to a new study.
Hopkins Nursing-led study finds that when compared with other neighborhoods and without regard to income, predominantly black neighborhoods have the most limited access to supermarkets and to the healthier foods such markets sell.
African Americans with high blood pressure who reported experiencing racial discrimination had lower rates of adherence to their blood pressure medication, finds a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.
A large study co-authored by Dominic Raj, M.D., director of the division of nephrology and professor of medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences., identifies factors that mediate differences in the progression of chronic kidney disease in order to reduce the excess burden of end-stage renal disease and its complications in black patients.
Online classified ad shoppers respond less often and offer lower prices when a seller is black rather than white, finds a newly published study based on an elegant field experiment.
Black men, vastly overrepresented among the prison population, comprise a high proportion of HIV-positive inmates and pose an infection risk to other inmates as well as members of their communities once they’re released. While sex is prohibited in U.S. prisons, sexual encounters are commonplace and few inmates express concern about getting or spreading HIV, according to a study of incarcerated Black men by Tawandra Rowell-Cunsolo, PhD, Assistant Professor of Social Welfare Science at the Columbia University School of Nursing.
Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are less likely than non-Hispanic Whites to visit a health care professional, even with health insurance, finds a recent study in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
New research finds improvements in access to care and health outcomes across racial and ethnic groups in Massachusetts since implementation of the state’s health reform law in 2007.
As American schools struggle with issues of race, diversity and achievement, a new study in the American Sociological Review has split the difference in the ongoing discussion of resegregation. Yes, black, white and Hispanic students were less likely to share classrooms in 2010 than in 1993, but no, that increase in segregation is usually not the result of waning efforts to reduce it.
Nearly 50 years ago, Harold Franklin arrived on campus to register for classes in the graduate school and became the first African-American student to enroll at Auburn University. Other young men and women soon followed. Over the next 14 months, Auburn is celebrating these and other individuals who were involved in the integration of the university through a yearlong commemoration that includes performances, programs, lectures and other events that organizers say offer something of interest to everyone.
When financial gain depends on cooperation, we might expect that people would put aside their differences and focus on the bottom line. But new research suggests that people’s racial biases make them more likely to leave money on the table when a windfall is not split evenly between groups.
A survey of stores in a predominantly black, low income area of Philadelphia found that nearly 80 percent received low ratings for the availability of healthy food, finds a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
• Among kidney transplant recipients younger than 40 years of age, African Americans and individuals with less education were more likely to receive lower-quality organs than Caucasians and those with college degrees.
• African Americans with higher education levels were not more likely to receive a lower-quality kidney than Caucasians with college degrees.
• Hispanics were just as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be put on the kidney transplant waitlist.
• Once waitlisted, Hispanics were less likely to receive a transplant from a deceased donor. This disparity was largely explained by differences in patient blood type and regional variability of organ supply among organ procurement organizations across the country.
A study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that the association between body fat and mortality due to cardiovascular disease differs between south and east Asians, a finding that has important implications for global health recommendations. Cardiovascular disease, a condition in which arteries thicken and restrict blood flow, kills more than 17 million people annually, making it the leading cause of death worldwide.
To address the global phenomenon of disparities in respiratory health, the American Thoracic Society and the European Respiratory Society have released an official policy statement in which each pledges its commitment to reducing health disparities between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups by continuing or initiating work with leaders from governments, academia, and other organizations to promote scientific inquiry and training, disseminate medical information and best practices, and monitor and advocate for public respiratory health.
Older women living in the most deprived areas of the U.S. Appalachia had higher rates of late stage breast cancer than women in more affluent areas, finds a new study in Health Services Research.