Health Disparities
Disparities in health, education, and other social indicators are among the most troubling features of our contemporary world. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, where the University of Minnesota is located, is noted for its high quality of life and progressive spirit. Yet we have some of the worst disparities between majority and minority populations of all major metropolitan areas. A recent Star Tribune editorial about the difficulty of keeping our middle class gives some dismal statistics. The percentage of children in poverty in Minneapolis-St. Paul has risen by 4% since 1999, to 28.8%, and is now slightly greater than that of Chicago, and significantly greater than some of the cities we most like to compare ourselves to: Austin TX, Denver, San Diego, and Seattle. Poverty and disparities go hand-in-hand.
Our Program in Health Disparities Research at the University of Minnesota is trying to work on disparities as they relate to health. They recently forwarded a Call for Proposals (CFP) from Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change. The web site says
In 2005, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched a new national program, Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change at the University of Chicago, to award and manage research grants totaling $6 million to healthcare organizations implementing interventions aimed at reducing disparities. The funds are used to evaluate the interventions and their potential for broad dissemination. With this pool of funds, project leaders hope that health plans, hospitals, and community clinics will be encouraged to focus on racial and ethnic disparities as a priority in their quality improvement agendas.
The Purpose statement in the Overview of the CFP says
Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change seeks to improve the quality of health care provided to patients from racial and ethnic backgrounds likely to experience disparities. Finding Answers will:
- grant funds to discover and evaluate practical and replicable solutions designed to reduce and eliminate disease specific racial and ethnic health care disparities;
- focus on interventions aimed at health care delivery for one or more of the following health concerns: cardiovascular disease, depression or diabetes;
- conduct systematic reviews of the literature regarding racial and ethnic health care disparities interventions; and
- disseminate results from these research efforts and systematic reviews to encourage health care systems to address racial and ethnic gaps in care.
A lot more information is given about the philosophy and details of the program in the FAQ.
Finding Answers can make a partial but important contribution to solving the broader disparities issue. A full solution involves dealing not just with disease, but also with health and nutrition, education, jobs and job training, housing, and transportation. In other words, a pretty thorough revamping of major pieces of our society.
Higher education, both through its expertise and its potential for convening a broad spectrum of players, can play a major role. For potential solutions to be realistic and accepted, that spectrum will have to include community members, whose on-the-ground expertise is a crucial part of the mix.