The Food and Drug Administration has missed its fifth consecutive deadline to propose banning formaldehyde from hair-straightening products, extending a pattern of delays that began in October 2023. The latest deadline passed on December 31, 2025, with no indication of when the agency will act.The proposed ban addresses formaldehyde’s links to breathing problems, myeloid leukemia, and uterine cancer. Research shows women using hair-straightening products more than four times yearly face double the uterine cancer risk compared to non-users. These products also correlate with reduced fertility, adding to concerns about toxic chemicals in beauty products affecting reproductive health.David Andrews, acting chief…
Author: Disparity Matters
Black Medicaid patients newly diagnosed with opioid use disorder wait months longer than white patients to receive life-saving medications, according to a national study analyzing records from nearly 1.2 million enrollees across 44 states. Black patients were about one-third less likely than white patients to receive methadone or other medications to treat opioid use disorder.Researchers found that Medicaid patients can wait up to six months to begin treatment, despite medical consensus that people with opioid use disorder should receive medication as quickly as possible. Between 27% and 34% of patients received medication within six months of diagnosis, meaning nearly 69%…
Extreme weather events pose a deadly and disproportionate threat to Black communities across the United States. Federal data from 2004-2018 reveals that Black Americans face a 50% higher risk of dying from extreme heat compared to non-Hispanic whites, highlighting a stark racial health disparity linked to climate change.Historical housing discrimination has created lasting vulnerabilities. Black and Brown neighborhoods that were denied investment through redlining practices are now hotter and more flood-prone than wealthier, predominantly white areas. These same communities often lack essential protections like air conditioning, which many residents couldn’t afford or didn’t need until recently.The health impacts extend beyond…
Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis experience significantly higher disease activity and pain levels than their non-Hispanic White peers, according to a new study analyzing data from 9,601 patients across 18 children’s hospitals in the United States and Canada.Researchers examined health disparities using the Pediatric Rheumatology Care and Outcomes Improvement Network registry, tracking patients seen between April 2011 and March 2024. They measured physician assessments of disease activity, patient and parent assessments of well-being, active joint counts, disease activity scores, and arthritis-related pain intensity.Initial analyses revealed that non-Hispanic Black patients carried the highest disease burden across all…
New research reveals stark racial and ethnic inequities in kidney failure treatment, with the most troubling disparities emerging among younger adults. A sequence analysis of more than 50,000 patients tracked over 10 years shows dramatic differences in who receives life-saving transplants and who dies while on dialysis.Black patients aged 18 to 44 faced the bleakest outcomes. By month 120, cumulative mortality reached 42.8% for Black patients compared to 23.2% for Asian Americans. Among those still living, only 4.3% of Black patients had functioning living donor kidney transplants versus 21.3% of white patients.”While the USRDS annual data report provides statistics by…
Grouping Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander pregnant people into a single health category has been concealing critical disparities in pregnancy-related high blood pressure, according to research examining 772,000 pregnancies in California.When researchers broke down data into 15 specific ethnic categories, they discovered Filipino and Pacific Islander pregnant individuals develop dangerous high blood pressure at three times the rate of Chinese women. Guamanian women experienced pregnancy-related high blood pressure 13 percent of the time, while Chinese women had it just 3.7 percent of the time. Hawaiian, Samoan and other Pacific Islander women showed similarly elevated rates, as did Filipino…
Native American and Alaska Native women face a devastating maternal health crisis, with the highest pregnancy-related mortality rates among all major demographic groups in the United States, according to 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.The disparity is particularly stark when examining preventable deaths. According to 2021 CDC data from 46 state maternal mortality review committees, 87% of maternal deaths nationwide were deemed preventable. For Native American and Alaska Native populations, committees determined that most, if not all, deaths were considered preventable.Rhonda Swaney, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, experienced this crisis firsthand nearly 50 years…