Links on Healthcare Disparities and Related Topics

Institute of Medicine Report

The Institute of Medicine’s important report “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” is available in full online, in PDF format. The report outlines information on disparities and recommendations for beginning to eliminate them.

http://www4.nationalacademies.org/onpi/webextra.nsf/web/minority?OpenDocument

“Public Health Reports”

The July-August 2003 issue of “Public Health Reports” is devoted to health care disparities.

http://www.publichealthreports.org/issuecontents.cfm?Volume=118&Issue=4

The National Healthcare Disparities Report Summary

The National Healthcare Disparities Report Summary: February 2004, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD, was created by agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This page links to the full 2003 report:

http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nhdr03/nhdrsum03.htm

Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

The Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion is the arm of the Department of Veterans Affairs that studies health disparities. Overall the site doesn’t have a lot of useful new information, but its basic introduction to disparities is helpful.

http://www.cherp.research.med.va.gov/

Healthy People 2010

The Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Minority Health initiated a “Healthy People 2010” campaign to increase longevity and eliminate health disparities. This page includes a list of problem medical areas, with links to further information on the consequences of disparities.

http://www.cdc.gov/omh/AboutUs/disparities.htm

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is studying disparities related to environmental and occupational exposures.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/factsheets/disparity/

American Medical Association & Disparities

What are doctors doing to eliminate disparities? The American Medical Association has introduced a number of measures that it hopes will help eliminate disparities. This page has links to research and resources:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/7639.html

American Medical Student Association & Disparities

The American Medical Student Association is working to educate future doctors about how they can provide the best care to every patient. The AMSA’s page includes information about its own initiatives as well as reports, statistics, and background on disparities.

http://www.amsa.org/disparities/

National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities

The National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities looks specifically at cancer-related disparities. The site includes data on specific disparities as well as information for cancer patients.

http://crchd.nci.nih.gov/

Some of my other favorite health-related links:

MayoClinic.com: http://www.mayoclinic.com/findinformation/diseasesandconditions/index.cfm

List of diseases, conditions, and therapies; very detailed descriptions with illustrations. Information is doctor-reviewed.

MedicineNet.com

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/hp.asp

Over 10,000 listings, including medical terms and important people in medical history. There are also health news articles to read.

National Library of Medicine

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nlmhome.html

This online library covers many topics, including diseases and history of medicine. There is also up-to-date information on biomedical science topics like toxicology and genomics.

The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy

http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/sections.jsp

Very detailed information about diseases and conditions from a trusted handbook.

http://www.msd.es/publicaciones/mmerck_hogar/index.html

Merck Manual in Spanish.

National Institutes of Health

http://health.nih.gov/

This health information page leads mostly to other sites with definitions and articles, some in Spanish.

MedBioWorld http://www.sciencekomm.at/advice/dict.html#part2

List of links, mostly active, to thousands of online medical resources, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. Includes other sciences related to medicine.

Ethnomed

http://ethnomed.org/

Information on health care-related beliefs among various cultures. Links to other sites with cross-cultural information.

Health Translations Directory

http://www.healthtranslations.vic.gov.au/

Thousands of multilingual publications in many languages. Not all are medical, but many are.