A recent update from a major player in the healthcare industry: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced that it plans to bridge the gaps in health outcomes between whites and minority groups by implementing three actions: studying the causes of racial inequities in healthcare delivery, improving its own hiring of minority staff, and beefing up its interpreting and translation services for minority communities.
Their first challenge will be to understand the reasons for health inequities, such as the fact that a black male’s average life expectancy is six years shorter than a white male’s, according to HHS statistics. Officials also want a better grasp of why many minority communities have higher incidences of diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Regarding its own hiring practices, HHS says it will recruit more employees from underserved communities into public health and biomedical science jobs. Officials also are counting on health reform’s expanded health coverage to benefit “minority populations [because they] overwhelmingly make up the ranks of the uninsured,” says Dr. Garth Graham, HHS deputy assistant secretary for minority health.
HHS is modeling its program on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP), a ten-year-old program that HHS officials say has helped reduce racial disparities in hypertension and other conditions among minority veterans.
This will be the most comprehensive effort ever at HHS to address racial and ethnic health care disparities. HHS also plans to increase its efforts to gather and analyze data about health issues in minority communities.
The Department has not yet released many details on exactly how they will implement this mission, but officials say there are annual reviews built into the new program to evaluate its progress over time.
Dr. Graham says, “We’re hoping in five years we will see more narrowing of the gap between minority populations and others. The short term goal is to see an impact in health care outcomes in minority populations through these actions. We want to be very transparent about the results. When we do our annual reviews, we want to have people see where we are.”