Health Policy and Management Professor and Chair Thomas LaVeist is one of three nationally known experts who authored a Viewpoint in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on how to achieve health equity by design.
The Viewpoint points out that infant mortality rates have been 2 to 3 times higher among African American populations for more than a decade. It also states that rates of potentially preventable hospitalization have been substantially higher among African American and Latino populations, and the complications of diabetes have disproportionately afflicted African American and Latino populations. These and other disparities have persisted despite recognition that inequity costs the economy an estimated $300 billion per year.
“It is time to broaden the expectation for what a health care system can do to include redesigning services to achieve health equity. Such interventions promote population health in the original meaning of the term, which includes focus on core contributors to disease. Incorporating these principles into the larger system will promote and sustain equity,” LaVeist and his coauthors wrote.
Read more