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General Information
Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Adults living in poor neighborhoods are 5 times as likely to be
hospitalized with asthma and congestive heart failure and almost 4
times as likely to be hospitalized with bacterial pneumonia.
Racial Disparities
Source: National Journal Group, 1999
A recent study sponsored by The
Commonwealth Fund indicates that minorities lag behind whites
on nearly every health indicator, including health care coverage,
access to care, life expectancy, and disease rates. Entitled
"U.S. Minority Health: A Chart book," the report reveals
that despite overall improvements in Americans’ health,
disparities persist across age, sex, and income categories. Karen
Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund, explains: "Lower
rates of health insurance coverage means less access to care,
higher infant mortality rates, greater rates of chronic and acute
disease in adulthood – and ultimately higher mortality rates for
minority Americans."
Findings regarding the racial
disparities in health care include the following:
- 24% of black adults lack
health insurance (compared with 14% of white adults).
- 39% of black adults report
that they do not have a regular physician (compared with 26%
of white adults).
- 41% of blacks over age 65
report that their health status is "fair or poor"
(compared with 23% of whites over age 65).
- 35% of black adults report
difficulty paying for medical care (compared with 26% of white
adults).
- 19% of black children lack
health insurance (compared with 11% of whites).
Dr. Karen Scott Collins,
assistant vice president of The Commonwealth Fund, concludes,
"Issues such as routine access to preventative care, cultural
competence in providing health care, and proportional
representation of minorities in the health professions must be
addressed to eliminate inequities."
Cancer
Source: American Cancer Society
- The survival rates for African
Americans are 10 – 15% lower than those of whites for the
most frequent cancers (other than lung cancer). For African
Americans with cancer, the five-year survival rate was 44%.
- The incidence of prostate
cancer among African American men was 73% higher than for
white men. 234 per 100,000 population of African American men
were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1992.
- From 1973 to 1992, the death
rate for African American men, who have one of the highest
incidences of prostate cancer in the world, rose by 41%.
- The five-year survival rate
for prostate cancer diagnosed in 1986 – 1993 was 15% lower
for African American men than for white men.
- African American men are 1.5
times more likely to develop prostate cancer and are 2 to 3
times more likely to die of the disease than white men.
- In 1993, breast cancer
mortality was 28% higher for African American women than for
white women.
- The survival rate for breast
cancer among African American women is 70% while the survival
rate for white women is 86%.
- In 1996, an estimated
1,359,150 new cancers were diagnosed in the United States.
136,380 of these new cancers were diagnosed among African
Americans.
- African American men have the
highest overall cancer and mortality rates.
Coronary Atherosclerosis
Source: American Heart Association
- Although mortality rates in
general for this category of death have been declining, the
percentage difference between white male and black male rates
has been increasing.
- Among African Americans aged
20 and older, 47% of men and 51% of women have blood
cholesterol levels over 200 mg/dL; 16% of men and 19% of women
have levels of 240 mg/dL or more.
- African Americans are far more
likely to have high blood pressure than whites. As many as 30%
of all deaths in hypertensive African American men and 20% of
all deaths in hypertensive African American women may be
attributable to high blood pressure.
- In 1993, the death rate from
high blood pressure was 30.0 (Out of 100,000)for African American males (361%
higher than for white males) and 22.6 (Out of 100,000) for African American
females (370% higher than for white females).
- From ages 35 – 74, the death
rate from heart attack for African American women was more
than 38% higher than that of white women.
Diabetes
Source: American Diabetes Association
- The rate of diabetes has
tripled in the African American community in the past thirty
years. From 1980 to 1994 alone, the number of diabetes cases
rose 33% among African Americans, three times the increase
among whites.
- Approximately 2.3 million or
10% of all African Americans have diabetes, however, one-third
of them do not know it.
- On average, African Americans
are 1.7 times more likely to have diabetes than whites.
- Twenty-five percent of African
Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 have diabetes.
- One in four African American
women over age 55 have diabetes.
- African Americans experience
higher rates of at least three of the serious complications of
diabetes: blindness, amputation, and end stage renal disease
(kidney failure).
Cerebrovascula
Atherosclerosis
Source: American Heart Association
- African Americans tend to
develop high blood pressure at an earlier age and, at any
decade of life, hypertension is more severe in African
Americans than in whites. This results in 1.3-fold greater
rate of nonfatal stroke, a 1.8-fold greater rate of fatal
stroke, a 1.5-fold greater rate of heart disease deaths, and a
5-fold greater rate of end-stage renal disease.
- The 1993 death rate from
stroke was 52.0 for African American males (94% higher than
for white males) and 39.9 for African American females (75%
higher than for white females).
- The estimated crude prevalence
of stroke was 1.8 for African American men and 2.5 for African
American women in 1993. Compared to whites, young African
Americans have a two-to-three-fold greater risk of cerebral
infarction and African American men and women are 2.5 times
more likely to die of stroke.
HIV and AIDS
Source: HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 2000
Violence and Accidental Injuries
Source:
National Institute on Aging, 1999-2000, p. 1
A landmark paper, entitled "Excess Mortality in Harlem"
(New England Journal of Medicine, 1990), compares
statistics from Harlem with death rates in the country of
Bangladesh. Its shocking conclusion was that black males in Harlem
have a lower chance of reaching age 65 than do Bangladeshi males.
Specifically, low-income blacks are at much greater risk from
being exposed to drug and gun violence than any other racial or
ethnic group.
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