PROFESSION

Study details gap in death rate by race; health care disparities blamed

Researchers hope findings will influence physician and policy-maker attitudes.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Dec. 20, 2004.

As the American Medical Association, National Medical Assn. and more than 30 other organizations prepare for a Jan. 31, 2005, launch of a commission to attack the problem of health care disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, a new study underscores the dire need for such an effort.

According to the report, published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, resolving racial disparities in health care could save fives times as many lives as the number saved by technological advances made in improving drugs, devices and medical procedures. Comparing mortality data of whites and African-Americans between 1991 and 2000, the researchers -- including a former U.S. surgeon general -- said they hope to highlight the impact of these disparities, as well as the effect of health care research priorities, which they say favor expensive "incremental improvements" in treatments over reducing the disparities in which these treatments are applied.

AMA President John C. Nelson, MD, MPH, said his first reaction after reading the study was "Wow."

"The magnitude is amazing," said Dr. Nelson, a Salt Lake City-based obstetrician-gynecologist who has pledged to make resolving health care disparities a priority of his presidency. "This adds tremendous fuel to our fire and will help us do our job to make our colleagues aware that this is a real problem."

Dr. Nelson said reducing disparities encompasses the AMA traditions of science, caring and ethics. "If we know something is a problem, we have to do something about it," he said. "Do we have a systematic bias that allows it to occur? If so, we have to find out what it is and change it."

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