Kennedy introduces Senate bill to reduce health disparities

Banner Staff

Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Thad Cochran, R-Miss., introduced legislation to the Senate last Thursday that would authorize roughly $500 million to improve the health of populations suffering from disparities in health care.

“Your health should not depend on the color of your skin, the size of your bank account or where you live. It is time to stop talking about health disparities and take action to eliminate them,” said Kennedy. “All Americans, including people of color, deserve an opportunity for a healthy life.”

Racial and ethnic minorities make up approximately one-third of the U.S. population, but comprise 52 percent of the uninsured and statistically suffer a greater burden of illness and death than their white counterparts.

“Congress must work to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to receive quality healthcare,” said Cochran, who said the proposed legislation would “provide the education, training, research opportunities and collaborative tools necessary to provide optimal care for all of our citizens.”

The legislation, titled the Minority Health Improvement and Health Disparity Elimination Act, proposes a comprehensive approach to addressing health disparities by providing grants to communities to increase public awareness about access to health care and disease prevention. The bill would also reauthorize the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and strengthen the center’s role in coordinating and planning relevant research.

Kennedy was the lead sponsor of the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, which created the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The bill would help achieve the goal of increasing cultural competency among health care providers — which Kennedy called “essential for a healthy America” — by focusing on the development of competency curricula for health professions schools and continuing education programs.

It addresses another primary focus, creating a more diverse health care workforce, by planning to establish scholarship grants for minorities making a mid-career change to a health profession and reauthorizing programs that help schools recruit and retain minority students as well as students from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as the Title VII health workforce diversity, Centers of Excellence and Health Careers Opportunity programs.

Other elements of the proposed legislation include reforms designed to strengthen the Office of Minority Health, mandated uniform data collection standards for federal health programs and the creation of an advisory committee at the Food and Drug Administration to address issues related to racial and ethnic minorities.

The bill’s co-sponsors include presidential front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois, New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.