Closing the Equity Gap in Health Care for Black Americans
<p>As Americans focus on troubling racial divisions in the country’s criminal justice system, we should not forget that those divisions exist in other areas of our national experience. One is health care.</p><p>In a new post on <em>To the Point</em>, The Commonwealth Fund’s Pamela Riley, Susan L. Hayes, and Jamie Ryan examine ways in which the U.S. health care system fails black Americans, who experience worse access to care, lower quality of care, and poorer health outcomes than the nation as a whole. As a result, blacks are substantially more likely than whites to die early from health conditions considered at least partially treatable or preventable with timely and appropriate medical care. </p>
<p>The authors also examine how current changes in the health care landscape offer unprecedented opportunities to close the equity gap for black Americans.</p>