Atlanta — Americans made advances in the 1990s against a broad range of diseases and other health threats, but glaring racial and ethnic disparities remain, the government reported Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study looked at 17 key "health indicators" statistics on everything from infant mortality to suicide to stroke, broken down into racial and ethnic groups.
For all but one of the indicators, the statistics improved for the overall U.S. population. The death rate dropped 9 percent for stroke, 15 percent for car crashes and more than 28 percent for homicides.
Of more concern to health officials are lingering gaps for racial and ethnic minorities. Even when those groups saw improvements in the 1990s, whites in some cases managed to improve faster.
Take breast cancer. From 1990 to 1998, the death rate fell 4 percent among black women and 13 percent among Hispanic women. For white women, the death rate dropped 18 percent.
Among the other alarming gaps were the rate of tuberculosis cases, eight times higher for blacks, six times higher for Hispanics, and homicide, 10 times higher for blacks, four times higher for Hispanics.
Researchers said the reasons for the gaps are different for each disease.
For federal health officials, who have set the goal of eliminating these gaps by 2010, the study shows a lot of work ahead.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.