minorities

Working with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH organization, UnitedHealth Group has launched an initiative intended to promote African-American health. The two groups are working to address disparities in the care African-American and other minority communities receive. The partners will also focus on health issues which are proving to be a particular challenge among African-Americans, including diabetes, cancer, coronary disease, asthma and obesity. UnitedHealth will give …

Concerned that they aren't addressing the different ways various ethnic groups respond to medication, researchers are mounting major efforts to recruit varied racial and ethnic groups for clinical trials. Right now, the average clinical trial volunteer is a white male between 18 to 40 years old--and this is a problem. Researchers have increasingly found that race and ethnicity can be important factors in how a patient responds to medications, with some drugs functioning better in certain …

> HealthSouth's CEO explains why the company's future is so bright, he has to wear shades. Article

> CareFirst BlueCross Blue Shield has teamed up with a Baltimore health system to boost health care for minorities. Article

> A Pennsylvania hospital's CEO …

Minorities continue to seek aggressive end-of-life treatment options and turn away alternatives like hospice care, research increasingly suggests. Only 7.5 percent of hospice patients are African-American, and only 4.8 percent are Hispanic--less than half of their percentage of the general population. An ongoing Harvard study funded by the National Cancer Institute involving about 800 terminally ill cancer patients is already finding that African Americans are two to three times as likely …

> A group of former and current employees of public hospital system Denver health have sued, alleging that the system is biased against minorities. Article

> A Massachusetts doctor has come under fire after a 4 year old girl died while taking psychiatric drugs she had prescribed. …

While anyone would argue that Medicare beneficiaries ought to the get the appropriate level of care regardless of their race or ethnic background, officials with Medicare aren't sure how to make this happen, according to experts addressing a Congressional briefing session this week. Right now, disparities definitely exist in how well minorities are cared for, both within and …

The Agency for health care Research and Quality has issued two reports on the quality of healthcare in America. Overall, healthcare is improving at a modest pace, but the nation's poor and uninsured don't have the same access to preventative medicine as others do. In addition, the agency found that differences in the care received by minorities continue to persist. "It's encouraging to learn that overall quality continues to improve. At the same time, the message is clear: Much more can …

The distribution of healthcare workers continues to be quite uneven across the U.S., according to a new report from The Center for Health Workforce Studies (CHWS) at the University at Albany's School of Public Health. The report, which used data from 2004, found that New Hampshire had the highest number of nurses per capita in the U.S., at 1,283 per 100,000 residents, while California, in contrast, has only 588 nurses per 100,000. Researchers also noted that only 5 percent of the nation's …

The University of South Florida College of Nursing has kicked off a program intended to increase the number of minorities entering teaching with a doctoral degree. To accomplish its goals, USF is working with historically black colleges across Florida. Five nursing instructors from Bethune-Cookman College joined USF's Doctorate of Nursing Practice program this semester, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal. The program is funded by a $450,838 extension of a $1.28 …

A recent report by the Centers for Health Workforce Studies finds that the number of minority doctors in New York state is still not in line with the state's proportion of minorities. "African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos and Native Americans make up 30 percent of the population but only 10 percent of the physician work force," notes The Business Review (Albany), while Asian Americans are over-represented in the physician work force. This is a problem because …