Download or read book What Drives Nutritional Disparities written by Jessie Handbury and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poor diets of many consumers are often attributed to limited access to healthy foods. In this paper, we use detailed data describing the healthfulness of household food purchases and the retail landscapes in which these consumers are making these decisions to study the role of access in explaining why some people in the United States eat more nutritious foods than others. We first confirm that households with lower income and education purchase less healthful foods. We then measure the spatial variation in the average nutritional quality of available food products across local markets, revealing that healthy foods are less likely to be available in low-income neighborhoods. Though significant, spatial differences in access are small and explain only a fraction of the variation that we observe in the nutritional content of household purchases. Systematic socioeconomic disparities in household purchases persist after controlling for access: even in the same store, more educated households purchase more healthful foods. Consistent with this result, we further find that the nutritional quality of purchases made by households with low levels of income and education respond very little when new stores enter or when existing stores change their product offerings. Together, our results indicate that policies aimed at improving access to healthy foods in underserved areas will leave most of the socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption intact.
Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Download or read book Unequal Treatment written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-02-06 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.
Download or read book Health Disparities in the United States written by Donald A. Barr and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential text for courses in public health, health policy, and sociology, this compelling book is a vital teaching tool and a comprehensive reference for social science and medical professionals.
Download or read book Why Are Health Disparities Everyone s Problem written by Lisa Cooper and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we all work together to eliminate the avoidable injustices that plague our health care system and society? Health is determined by far more than a person's choices and behaviors. Social and political conditions, economic forces, physical environments, institutional policies, health care system features, social relationships, risk behaviors, and genetic predispositions all contribute to physical and mental well-being. In America and around the world, many of these factors are derived from a lingering history of unequal opportunities and unjust treatment for people of color and other vulnerable communities. But they aren't the only ones who suffer because of these disparities—everyone is impacted by the factors that degrade health for the least advantaged among us. In Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? Dr. Lisa Cooper shows how we can work together to eliminate the injustices that plague our health care system and society. The book follows Cooper's journey from her childhood in Liberia, West Africa, to her thirty-year career working first as a clinician and then as a health equity researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Drawing on her experiences, it explores how differences in communication and the quality of relationships affect health outcomes. Through her work as the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, it details the actions and policies needed to reduce and eliminate the conditions that are harming us all. Cooper reveals with compelling detail how health disparities are crippling our health care system and society, driving up health care costs, leading to adverse health outcomes and ultimately an enormous burden of human suffering. Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? demonstrates the ways in which everyone's health is interconnected, both within communities and across the globe. Cooper calls for a new kind of herd immunity, when a sufficiently high proportion of people, across race and social class, become immune to harmful social conditions through "vaccination" with solidarity among groups and opportunities created by institutional and societal practices and policies. By acknowledging and acting upon that interconnectedness, she believes everyone can help to create a healthier world. Features • Raises readers' health care inequities literacy through an approachable narrative with specific examples • Introduces the concept of "herd immunity" as it applies to building communal awareness of systemic injustices • Features sections that underscore key takeaways • Includes contributions from the world's leading minds through their research findings and quotations • Guides readers on what can be done at an individual level as a patient, public health professional, and community member • Includes inspiring stories of effective health equity studies and practices around the world, from Ghana's ADHINCRA Project addressing hypertension control to Baltimore's BRIDGE Study for depression in African Americans and the Maryland and Pennsylvania–based RICH LIFE Project for hypertension, diabetes, and other medical conditions Johns Hopkins Wavelengths In classrooms, field stations, and laboratories in Baltimore and around the world, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professors of Johns Hopkins University are opening the boundaries of our understanding of many of the world's most complex challenges. The Johns Hopkins Wavelengths book series brings readers inside their stories, illustrating how their pioneering discoveries benefit people in their neighborhoods and across the globe in artificial intelligence, cancer research, food systems' environmental impacts, health equity, science diplomacy, and other critical arenas of study. Through these compelling narratives, their insights will spark conversations from dorm rooms to dining rooms to boardrooms.
Download or read book A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronic diseases are common and costly, yet they are also among the most preventable health problems. Comprehensive and accurate disease surveillance systems are needed to implement successful efforts which will reduce the burden of chronic diseases on the U.S. population. A number of sources of surveillance data-including population surveys, cohort studies, disease registries, administrative health data, and vital statistics-contribute critical information about chronic disease. But no central surveillance system provides the information needed to analyze how chronic disease impacts the U.S. population, to identify public health priorities, or to track the progress of preventive efforts. A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases outlines a conceptual framework for building a national chronic disease surveillance system focused primarily on cardiovascular and chronic lung diseases. This system should be capable of providing data on disparities in incidence and prevalence of the diseases by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographic region, along with data on disease risk factors, clinical care delivery, and functional health outcomes. This coordinated surveillance system is needed to integrate and expand existing information across the multiple levels of decision making in order to generate actionable, timely knowledge for a range of stakeholders at the local, state or regional, and national levels. The recommendations presented in A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases focus on data collection, resource allocation, monitoring activities, and implementation. The report also recommends that systems evolve along with new knowledge about emerging risk factors, advancing technologies, and new understanding of the basis for disease. This report will inform decision-making among federal health agencies, especially the Department of Health and Human Services; public health and clinical practitioners; non-governmental organizations; and policy makers, among others.
Download or read book Food Deserts and the Causes of Nutritional Inequality written by Hunt Allcott and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We study the causes of "nutritional inequality": why the wealthy eat more healthfully than the poor in the United States. Exploiting supermarket entry, household moves to healthier neighborhoods, and purchasing patterns among households with identical local supply, we reject that neighborhood environments contribute meaningfully to nutritional inequality. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same products and prices available to high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only nine percent, while the remaining 91 percent is driven by differences in demand. These findings counter the common notion that policies to reduce supply inequities, such as "food deserts," could play an important role in reducing nutritional inequality. By contrast, the structural results predict that means-tested subsidies for healthy food could eliminate nutritional inequality at a fiscal cost of about 15 percent of the annual budget for the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Download or read book Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities written by Paula Braveman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you ask most people what influences health, almost invariably the first reply will be health care-the services that individuals receive from physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals to treat or prevent illness, also called medical care. Many people, in fact, presume the role of health care (medical care) in affecting health to be so predominant that they often use the terms health and health care interchangeably. Many people would probably also cite behaviors such as diet, exercise, smoking, and use of alcohol or drugs as key influences on health. While ample evidence supports the importance of both health care and behaviors for health, a compelling body of scientific knowledge now calls for a wider and deeper set of explanations for why some of us experience good health and others do not. This body of knowledge challenges us to think beyond common assumptions about the key causes of health and illness, to ask not only "What influences health?" but also "What factors shape those influences?" i.e., "What influences the influences?" This knowledge tells us that, to achieve real and lasting improvements in health, we must shift the focus to identifying and addressing the root or fundamental causes(Link and Phelan 1995)-the underlying factors that set in motion other factors that may be more easily observed but play a less fundamental role in shaping health. Ethical concerns, furthermore, require us to focus not only on a population's overall or average health, but also on health equity-whether everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible, which includes whether the resources, opportunities, and conditions required for good health are distributed equitably within the population"--
Download or read book The Science of Health Disparities Research written by Irene Dankwa-Mullan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrates the various disciplines of the science of health disparities in one comprehensive volume The Science of Health Disparities Research is an indispensable source of up-to-date information on clinical and translational health disparities science. Building upon the advances in health disparities research over the past decade, this authoritative volume informs policies and practices addressing the diseases, disorders, and gaps in health outcomes that are more prevalent in minority populations and socially disadvantaged communities. Contributions by recognized scholars and leaders in the field—featuring contemporary research, conceptual models, and a broad range of scientific perspectives—provide an interdisciplinary approach to reducing inequalities in population health, encouraging community engagement in the research process, and promoting social justice. In-depth chapters help readers better understand the specifics of minority health and health disparities while demonstrating the importance of advancing theory, refining measurement, improving investigative methods, and diversifying scientific research. In 26 chapters, the book examines topics including the etiology of health disparities research, the determinants of population health, research ethics, and research in African American, Asians, Latino, American Indian, and other vulnerable populations. Providing a unified framework on the principles and applications of the science of health disparities research, this important volume: Defines the field of health disparities science and suggests new directions in scholarship and research Explains basic definitions, principles, and concepts for identifying, understanding and addressing health disparities Provides guidance on both conducting health disparities research and translating the results Examines how social, historical and contemporary injustices may influence the health of racial and ethnic minorities Illustrates the increasing national and global importance of addressing health disparities Discusses population health training, capacity-building, and the transdisciplinary tools needed to advance health equity A significant contribution to the field, The Science of Health Disparities Research is an essential resource for students and basic and clinical researchers in genetics, population genetics, and public health, health care policymakers, and epidemiologists, medical students, and clinicians, particularly those working with minority, vulnerable, or underserved populations.
Download or read book The Economics of Obesity written by Tahereh Alavi Hojjat and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the economic causes of obesity, but this book offers a comprehensive and deep investigation of the causes and treatment of these issues in a single volume. In the second edition, the author expands upon the serious threat that obesity poses not only to our health, but also to our society. Obesity costs billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and medical expenses. The social distribution of obesity has changed over time. Obesity rates in the United States continue to worsen in parallel with income inequality. Socioeconomic groups with low personal capital, levels of education, and income have higher obesity rates. In fact, the rate of obesity has increased the fastest among low-income Americans. The disproportionate burden of obesity on the poor poses an economic challenge and an ethical imperative. The link between obesity, inactivity, and poverty may be too costly to ignore because obesity-associated chronic disease already accounts for 70% of US healthcare costs. Although economic and technological changes in the environment drove the obesity epidemic, the evidence for effective economic policies to prevent obesity remains limited. The new edition brings together a multitude of topics on obesity previously not discussed with a particular emphasis on the influence of poverty and income inequality on obesity including: Economic Analysis: Behavioral Patterns, Diet Choice, and the Role of Government Income and Wealth Inequality and Obesity Social Mobility and Health Food Policies, Government Interventions, and Reducing Poverty The Economics of Obesity is an essential text for readers interested in learning about the causes and consequences of obesity within a social context including students, academicians, and practitioners in public health, medicine, social sciences, and health economics, both in and outside of the United States. US and international policy-makers also will find the book a salient read in addressing the issues that contribute to the cycle of poverty, income inequality, and obesity.
Download or read book Cancer Disparities written by Ronit Elk and published by Springer Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been remarkable progress in understanding, preventing, detecting, diagnosing, and treating cancer, resulting in a reduction of cancer incidence and mortality in the United States. Despite this, the cancer burden varies considerably by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Cancer incidence rates vary markedly between racial/ethnic groups, but even more startling are the differences in outcome across groups. Cancer Disparities: Causes and Evidence-Based Solutions helps readers understand the scope and causes of this inequity by providing a detailed analysis of the many factors that result in cancer disparities across the cancer continuum, including the role of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, access to and use of services, insurance status, geographic variables, and differences in treatment provided to patients. Further, it is the first book to describe evidence-based, concrete solutions that can be used to reduce or even eliminate cancer health disparities. Fifteen previously unpublished studies of interventions designed specifically to achieve health equality are described. These studies focus on contextually and culturally appropriate strategies to enhance cancer prevention, screening and early detection, treatment, symptom management, and quality of life in underserved populations.
Download or read book The Challenges of Health Disparities written by Darren Liu and published by Jones & Bartlett Learning. This book was released on 2018-09-12 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique text explores health disparities in the United States and their implications from the perspective of a health care administration The book begins with a broad overview of health disparities including definitions from local, state, and federal legislation, as well as alternative definitions. The authors examine current and past frameworks of analysis regarding the causes of disparities and provide a statistical overview of death rates and their implications for health care administrators. In the final section of the book, each chapter looks at health disparities within each type of health care environment such as physician practices, hospitals, pharmaceutical products, Medicare/Medicaid, long-term care, insurance markets, and more.
Download or read book Hunger and Obesity written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-06-26 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At some point during 2009, more than 17 million households in the United States had difficulty providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources. In more than one-third of these households, the food intake of some household members was reduced and normal eating patterns were disrupted due to limited resources. The Workshop on Understanding the Relationship Between Food Insecurity and Obesity was held to explore the biological, economic, psychosocial, and other factors that may influence the relationship between food insecurity, overweight, and obesity in the United States. Hunger and Obesity examines current concepts and research findings in the field. The report identifies information gaps, proposes alternative approaches to analyzing data, recommends new data that should be collected, and addresses the limitations of the available research.
Download or read book Social Determinants Health Disparities and Linkages to Health and Health Care written by Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at the key links between social determinants, health disparities and health and health care. There is a particular focus on macro-level systems and micro-level issues, including the examination of issues for patients, carers and providers of care.
Download or read book Unequal Cities written by Maureen R. Benjamins and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The contributors to this edited volume explore the degree to which racial health disparities affect death rates in America's 30 largest cities. By examining mortality statistics related to leading causes of death, they are able to show that each of the cities in question has some serious work to do and that in many places the differences are more or less pronounced than in others"--
Download or read book How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the 21st century, several important reports and events designed to raise awareness of health disparities and to describe initial efforts to reduce health disparities took place. The Surgeon General's office released several reports that showed dramatic disparities in tobacco use and access to mental health services by race and ethnicity. The first real legislation focused on reducing health disparities was signed into law, creating the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities within the NIH. In 2001, the IOM released its landmark report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, highlighting the importance of a focus on health care quality rather than a focus on only access and cost issues. Building upon these reports and events, the IOM held a workshop on April 8, 2010, that discussed progress to address health disparities and focused on the success of various federal initiatives to reduce health disparities. How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities? summarizes the workshop and explains the progress in the field since 2000.
Download or read book Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences written by Michele Ver Ploeg and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 directed the U.S. Dept. of Agr. to conduct a 1-year study to assess the extent of areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, identify characteristics and causes of such areas, consider how limited access affects local populations, and outline recommend. to address the problem. This report presents the findings of the study, which include results from two conferences of national and internat. authorities on food deserts and a set of research studies. It also includes reviews of existing literature, a national-level assessment of access to large grocery stores and supermarkets, analysis of the economic and public health effects of limited access, and a discussion of existing policy interventions. Illus.
