Disparity, or unequal treatment, is a critical issue facing health care in Connecticut and across the United States. The Connecticut Health Foundation has made a long-term commitment to eliminate factors that contribute to health disparities experienced by racial and ethnic populations in Connecticut.
The goal of the racial and ethnic health disparities initiative is to decrease racial and ethnic health disparities. Over the next 10 years, the foundation will invest in projects that: 1. Create public will to decrease racial and ethnic health disparities in access and treatment; 2. Improve the quality of systems that enhance patient-provider interactions in order to promote health equity.
The 2002 report of the Institute of Medicine, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, concluded that minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than whites, even when insurance status, income, age and severity of conditions are comparable. Differences in how heart disease, cancer and HIV infection in minority patients are treated by physicians may partly contribute to higher mortality rates. More minority health care providers means more empathetic and culturally competent care, and perhaps increased trust and improved communication between patient and providers. Former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., MPH, stated: “ I do not believe that we can prepare physicians to take care of diverse communities without having a diverse population of medical students and a diverse faculty.”
African-American and Hispanic physicians are far more likely -- 1.5 to 2 times -- to treat Medicaid or uninsured patients than white physicians from the same area. Nearly half of the patients seen by African-American physicians and one-third of patients seen by Hispanic physicians are Medicaid or uninsured patients. Increasing the diversity of the student body enhances the academic environment, challenges long-held biases and provides economic opportunity.
Improving communication between provider and patient improves care. According to the American Medical Association, there were 13,020 physicians practicing in non-federal locations in Connecticut in 1999. For almost a quarter of these practitioners (3,183), their race or ethnicity was unknown. Two percent were African-American (260), 2 percent were Hispanic (255), 8.4 percent were Asian (1,100), and 2.4 percent were from other minority groups (311).
