The federal Teaching Health Center (THC) Graduate Medical Education (GME) program, which trains primary care doctors in outpatient clinics rather than hospitals, is facing financial uncertainty. The program, established under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, relies on congressional appropriations for funding and will run out of funds at the end of December unless lawmakers vote to replenish its coffers. Dr. Diana Perez, a medical resident at the Family Health Center of Harlem, is one of the doctors being trained through this program. She has been based at this New York City health center for most of the past 3 years,…
Author: Disparity Matters
Demand for and use of mental healthcare services increased slightly across adults in all demographics in the last decade, according to the American Psychiatric Association. But in the past three years, 50% of white adults reported receiving mental health services compared with 39% of Black adults and 36% of Hispanic adults. There are many reasons why people of color are less likely to seek and receive mental healthcare, from cultural stigma and a lack of diverse providers to high costs and geographical barriers, said Dawn Tyus, director and principal investigator of the African American Behavioral Health Center of Excellence at Morehouse…
Helping youth in Chicago with mental health struggles
Individuals of Hispanic/Latino or African descent vs White individuals are at a higher risk for developing Alzheimer disease and related dementias. However, they are routinely underrepresented in clinical trials. In 2021, the FDA fast-tracked aducanumab (Aduhelm®) for approval as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, the first new FDA-approved treatment for the disease in over 20 years of research and development. The multinational clinical trials were designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of aducanumab, however, the population included extraordinarily low proportions of patients with African (0.6%) or Hispanic/Latino (3.2%) ancestry. Researchers published a systematic review of the literature in 2022 and included 101…
Jim Crow-era laws, along with segregated pools and beaches, are a key reason why so few Black people know how to swim — and why a thousand or more drown each year — and, the numbers have increased every year since the pandemic. Now, community groups and nonprofit are working to reverse the trend.The statistics are grim: More than 4,500 people died from unintentional drowning each year in the United States from 2020 to 2022, an increase of about 500 compared to 2019. The increase reverses decades of decline in drowning rates. The CDC found that, for Black people, rates of…
A Pennsylvania Department of Health study reveals a stark racial disparity in the administration of naloxone, a life-saving opioid overdose reversal drug. Black Pennsylvanians who succumbed to opioid overdoses were 50% less likely to have received naloxone compared to their white counterparts, despite a more than 50% increase in Black overdose deaths from 2019 to 2021. This contrasted with no significant change in white overdose deaths during the same period.The Department’s representative highlighted the complex nature of this issue, citing the rapidly changing drug supply, particularly the prevalence of fentanyl, and inequities in access to substance use disorder treatments as…
The rates of diabetic retinopathy, a sight-threatening eye disorder, are increasing most rapidly among younger people and Black and Hispanic populations in the United States, according to a new study led by the Cleveland Clinic in Florida. The research, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, analyzed data from over 359,000 people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes between 2015 and 2022. It revealed that overall prevalence of retinopathy increased by 15% for those with type 1 diabetes and 7% for those with type 2. However, the most striking disparities were seen among racial and ethnic minorities and younger age groups. Hispanic men and…
Exposure to gun violence, both direct and indirect, has a significant negative impact on the functional health of Black Americans, particularly women, according to a new study published in the Journal of Urban Health. The research, conducted by Christopher St. Vil from the University at Buffalo School of Social Work and colleagues from Rutgers University, analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 3,015 Black American adults. The study found that 40% of participants personally knew a shooting victim, while nearly 60% had been exposed to at least one type of gun violence, such as being threatened with a firearm, intentionally…
Recent studies supporting a long-suspected link between cancer and hair relaxers used by Black women have prompted lawsuits across the country and have encouraged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider banning those containing formaldehyde. The Sister Study, led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in 2022, and several other studies, offer compelling scientific evidence of what has long been suspected to explain racial disparities that scientists have struggled to explain for decades, according to a report in The New York Times. The FDA proposed the ban in October 2023, but has yet to implement it. If…
Disparities in time to prescription fill for anti-myeloma drugs exist based on race and insurance type, researchers have found. In people with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, high out-of-pocket costs or the burdensome insurance precertification process can delay the start of costly anti-myeloma agents and can lead some patients to resort to less-costly corticosteroids. In a study of 723 adults newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma from 2017 through 2021, the cumulative incidences of prescription filled for anti-myeloma drugs excluding corticosteroids at 30 days was 40% in White patients, 28% in Black patients, and 17% in other races. Black patients were 37% less…