Perspective Looks at Progress Reducing Health Disparities

"Decades of Work To Reduce Disparities in Health Care Produce Limited Success," Journal of the American Medical Association: In the JAMA perspective, Rebecca Voelker discusses how several recent studies show that "despite decades of efforts" to reduce racial and ethnic health care disparities, there has been limited progress in some key treatment areas, largely because health disparities reflect larger socioeconomic issues and efforts to improve overall quality of care do not specifically target disparity reduction. Voelker writes that there are many studies that document disparities, but there are few findings about how to reduce them (Voelker, JAMA, 3/26).