Fix medical disparity for greatest impact

RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 10 (UPI) -- More people died from racial disparities in health status over the last decade than were saved by medical advances, reports a Virginia public health physician.

An analysis of mortality data shows that technological advances in medicine saved 176,333 lives, while equalizing the mortality rates of whites and African Americans could have saved 886,202 lives, reported Dr. Steven Woolf, director of research at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Using mortality data for 1991 through 2000 from the National Center for Health Statistics, the team used declines in age-adjusted mortality rates to estimate the impact of medical advances. They calculated that improved medical techniques and treatments saved 176,633 people during the time period studied.

During the same time period, age-adjusted mortality rates for white males and females were an average of 29 percent and 24 percent lower, respectively, than those for blacks, suggesting that 886,202 deaths could have been averted if disparities were erased.

"Five deaths could have been averted for every life saved by medical advances," wrote Woolf, a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine.

The article appears in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.