Minorities and Healthcare Disparities: Access, Diagnosis, Treatment and Mortality
Posted: 8 Feb 2010
Date Written: January 25, 2010
Abstract
In recent decades significant advances have been made in the detection and treatment of chronic, debilitating and life threatening illnesses. Despite numerous medical advances, African Americans continue to exhibit a disproportionately high incidence of stroke, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, an addition to numerous debilitating illnesses, when compared to the general population and various racial and ethnic groups (Adler and Newman 2002). A copious number of hypotheses have been advanced to explain the disparity in the illness and disease incidence rates between African Americans and the general population in the United States. The literature also suggests that African Americans have a higher mortality rate than white Americans when diagnosed with similar chronic illnesses and disease (Hayward, Crimmins, Miles and Yu, 2000). The primary objective of this paper is to examine factors which may contribute to, and in some cases, cause the disparities observed in the treatment, diagnosis and mortality rates observed between African Americans and other racial and ethnic groups in the United States particularly white American.
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