Question

LaVeist tells us "equality is the goal to be achieved when providing health care to racial and ethnic minorities"

1. How would you define Health status and Health care disparities? Can you provide an example ?

2. Why do Health status and Health care Disparities matter?

3. Based upon the disparities across the life span, how can we address this equality goal?

Answer 1

1. Health status is a broad term and is defined as the level of health of an individual, group, community or race.

Health care disparity is defined as the differences in health status of people or population of different races and geographical area. It also includes differences in accessing the healthcare facilities.

For example, the health status compared between Americans and Africans shows better health status of Americans. The difference between the health status of two populations is called health disparity.