By Usha Lee McFarling, Illustration: ADOBE, STAT, July 12, 2023
The nation’s widespread racial health disparities won’t be erased without changes to how health care systems are funded and accredited, more public and financial accountability for poor patient outcomes, and more work to overturn the income inequality and residential segregation tied to poorer health and lower life expectancy for many people who are Black and brown.
Those are some of the conclusions of health equity experts who spoke to a committee this week that is building on the work of the landmark National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine “Unequal Treatment” report, which was published 20 years ago and was the first major report to point to racism — not lack of insurance, poverty, or refusal to seek care — as a major factor in causing health disparities.
The group is meeting in a series of public workshops over the next few months, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, to look at the state of the nation’s health disparities and what initiatives may be working to end them and plans to release a full report in 2024. But many at the meeting could not help but express frustration that, as STAT has reported, so little progress has been made since the report was published in 2003.
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