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 Tragic Health Burden for Minorities
The Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity at Wake Forest University School of Medicine is addressing one of the most compelling demographic trends in modern American history—the increasing diversity of the U.S. population. By 2050, the country will be split almost evenly between non-Hispanic Whites and all other minority groups.
Initially focused on African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and American Indians, the expertise developed at the Angelou Center will position it as a key national resource to reduce the gap in health disparities for an increasingly diverse society.
One year before the Angelou Center opened in 2002, Congress authorized a National Healthcare Disparities Report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The AHRQ, in tandem with the Institute of Medicine, identified key issues for study related to health disparities for racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S.—the role of socioeconomic status, access to care, quality of services, and geography.
The urgency behind the federal mandate is based on these facts:
· The gap between blacks and whites in (age-adjusted) death rate from all causes has decreased only slightly from 1950 to 2000.
· Minority adults and children are less likely than whites to have a usual source of health care;
· Infant mortality among African Americans is more than twice that of whites;
· Teen pregnancy rates among minorities are higher than for whites;
· Some minority adults have a higher mortality rate than whites due to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer;
· The incidence of some communicable diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, is higher among some minority groups; and
· Minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than whites even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable.
“WE ARE MORE ALIKE, MY
FRIEND/THAN WE ARE
UNALIKE.”
- MAYA ANGELOU
The initial National Healthcare Disparities Report defined quality as the degree to which health services consistent with current professional knowledge increases the desired health outcomes. Wake Forest University created The Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity to contribute to a national solution for this “inequality of quality” in health care and the disparity in health status among our nation’s citizens.
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Angelou Center Adopts Challenge
Adopting the spirit of a political action slogan that originated with the environmental movement, the Angelou Center leadership is thinking globally while acting locally. Wake Forest University is in Forsyth County, North Carolina, which has a population more than 20 percent African American and the fastest growing Hispanic population in the U.S. Forsyth County and the greater Piedmont Triad region offer an appropriate statistical microcosm of minority populations for clinical research and designing community outreach programs. These programs will be applicable to minority populations in communities across the United States.
National priorities for minority health issues, as outlined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provide the impetus for the Angelou Center and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine to work to enhance quality outcomes in six target areas: infant mortality, cancer screening and management, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and immunizations.
A critical premise of the work at the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity is that health and disease cannot be considered solely through the lens of physiology. Health and disease are the result of a complex interaction of socioeconomic factors, culture, politics, and access to care. For example, while many minority patients gain some access through emergency or primary care venues, too often they do not get adequate follow-up for the required specialized care or prescription drugs. A National Research Council report in 2000 stated the health challenges of many minority groups “…cannot be addressed successfully by either the biomedical
sciences or the behavioral and social sciences acting alone.”
While health policy is not part of the Angelou Center’s immediate mission, Dr. William Applegate, senior vice president and dean of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, views The Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity as central to another national challenge. That is, the renewal of the social contract he believes physicians have unintentionally backed away from as their profession has come under the intense pressure of managed care and escalating liability insurance costs.
“A conscious commitment to serve the needs of the underprivileged in our society,” said Applegate, “through outreach programs, more effective
delivery channels for better treatment, and clinical and basic research at the Angelou Research Center, will call our collective attention to this essential professional renaissance required for medical doctors to regain the honor and respect society has historically invested in us.”
It Is the Right Thing to Do
About six months after Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center announced its commitment to alleviating health disparities among minorities, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services convened the National Leadership Summit on Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health. The Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity expects to be a competitive applicant for important federal funding through agencies like the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.
Achievement of the Angelou’s Center’s goals will require significant private philanthropic support as well as federal investment. In fact, history reminds us that it is frequently action from the grass roots, from people who recognize a problem and step forward to address it, that moves larger institutions in both the public and private sectors to make the necessary reforms to implement desired change.
It is the goal of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity and Wake Forest University to reduce the disproportionate health burden faced by minorities because it is the right thing to do. The increasingly high-tech medicine that many have come to rely upon will not benefit everyone without the kind of “high touch” initiatives that the Angelou Center intends to facilitate.
Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity
Wake Forest University Baptist
Medical Center, Medical Center Blvd., Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1021
MACHE@wfubmc.edu.
or visit our website:
http://www1.wfubmc.edu/alumni/gifts. |