WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) -- The racial healthcare gap is increasing disease and mortality because of the unhealthy lifestyles and environments many ethnic minorities face today, experts said this week.
Brian Smedley, who recently served as senior program officer at the Institute of Medicine, told the Center for American Progress that education and income are a greater factor than race when it comes to health problems. But while life expectancy has improved for Americans collectively, differences in healthcare for minorities persist.
Residential segregation and living conditions are partly to blame for the higher disease rates of ethnic minorities. Minorities are disadvantaged not only in healthcare policy and income status, but they also lack education in how to prevent health problems. For instance, those living in underserved communities suffer more from obesity, lung cancer, diabetes and AIDS, all preventable diseases. While government health initiatives are attempting to close the healthcare gap, much remains to be done.
"This is an investment we cannot afford not to make," said Delegate Donna Christian-Christensen, D-Virgin Islands, the first woman medical doctor to become a member of Congress. "We need to do everything that we can to eliminate the health disparities today. ... They are undermining the foundation of our country."
Christian-Christensen promotes legislation to reduce racial health disparities through the black caucus and the tri-caucus, a group composed of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Hispanic caucus and the black caucus.
Christian-Christensen told the panel that black men have eight times, and black women 25 times, more AIDS than their white counterparts, and both groups are more likely to die from the disease.
The differences in health quality among races are overwhelming -- and not only in the case of AIDS, she said.
A little over half of U.S. black women between ages 20 and 74 are obese, compared to 31.5 percent of white women in the same age group, according to federal statistics. Similarly, 14.9 percent of Mexican Americans have diabetes, while only 8.9 percent of whites have the disease. Also, 36.5 percent of American Indian and Alaska native adult males smoke cigarettes, compared with 24.1 percent of white adult males.
But it's not surprising underserved communities, which lack access to health information and regular advice from physicians, suffer more from these preventable conditions. "Health literacy" and access to a regular source of care are basic assets for a healthy lifestyle, said Meredith King, a health policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.
Diet and exercise are often hard to maintain in communities without bicycle paths, inexpensive gyms and grocery stores with fresh produce, King said. Increasing the access to places for physical activity would increase the amount that people get out and exercise.
"Local organizations are better equipped to effectively administer behavioral interventions and are more likely to be able to transcend cultural and discriminatory barriers," said King. Reach 2010, or Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health, is a federal initiative launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to eliminate disparities in health status experienced by racial and ethnic minority populations. In Charlotte, N.C., REACH 2010 has formed a relationship with the YMCA to provide inexpensive exercise possibilities, said La Tonya Chavis, director of the program's Charlotte branch. The program has also introduced a farmers' market into the community to encourage residents to buy local produce.
While accessible physicians might be the obvious answer to overwhelming health gaps, there just aren't enough who are willing, or can afford to give, the amount of healthcare needed, said Christian-Christensen.
"Physicians can't do it all," said King, "but they are starting to work with the community."
Advancing availability of health resources to underserved communities will reduce the neglect felt by many ethnic minorities, experts agree.
