Session: Black and Minority Health: Twenty Years After the Heckler Report (Medical Care Section Solicited Session #1)


Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

3123.0: Monday, December 12, 2005: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM

Oral

Black and Minority Health: Twenty Years After the Heckler Report (Medical Care Section Solicited Session #1)

The 1985 Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Black and Minority Health released by then Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, documented significant disparities in the burden of illness and mortality experienced by Blacks and other minority groups in the US population. The report laid out an ambitious agenda, including improving minority access to high quality health care, expanding health promotion and health education outreach activities, increasing the number of minority health care providers, and enhancing Federal and State data collection activities to better report on minority health issues. In this four-part panel presentation, we compare the health and mortality of minority populations then and now in the context of changes that have occurred in the health care delivery system over the last 20 years. In the first panel presentation, Diane Makuc from the National Center for Health Statistics, who contributed to the original Heckler Report and directed work on the annual report Health, United States for many years, will examine the background of the Heckler report, provide an overview of its primary findings and recommendations, and summarize some current Federal reports that monitor minority health. Irma Arispe from the National Center for Health Statistics, who is involved in the development of the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports (NHQR/DR), will contrast recommendations from the Heckler report with those of the NHQR/DR and examine changes in data collection and reporting on health for minorities that have occurred since 1985, identifying improvements in our ability to monitor and report on health disparities as well as outlining persistent data limitations in disparities measurement. In the third paper, Ernest Moy from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of the co-Directors of the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports, discusses changes over the twenty year period in health care delivery and outcomes related to chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, that impose a heavy burden on racial and ethnic minorities and were targeted for action in the Heckler Report. The final presentation from Julia Holmes of the National Center for Health Statistics, who contributes to the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports, highlights trends in maternal and child health during the twenty year period. Measures of access to maternity care, infant and maternal mortality, and utilization of health care resources by women and children will be compared over this time period.

Learning Objectives: 1) Describe the background and purpose of the Heckler Report; 2) Identify the primary impediments to collecting and reporting data on race and ethnicity in 1985; 3) Compare and evaluate the status of minority health and health care delivery between 1985 and 2005; 4) Describe how current reporting efforts on health disparities could be enhanced by improvements in data collection and reporting on race and ethncitiy.

Organizer(s):

Ernest Moy, MD

Presider(s):

Ernest Moy, MD

10:30 AM

Federal reporting on minority health over the past 20 years
Diane Makuc, DrPH

10:50 AM

Comparing and contrasting the 1985 Heckler and 2004 National Healthcare Disparities Report: Do we have a better picture, or are we just using a better camera?