Infant mortality rates for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are 60 percent higher than rates for white babies. Hispanic children are more likely to be obese and African-American mothers experience the highest rates of preterm births. Children living in rural areas are more likely to have complex diseases and live further from hospitals; while children in urban areas experience the highest rates of morbidity from asthma.
Health in the U.S. is not equitable. Not everyone has access to healthcare, especially healthcare that is culturally relevant and free from bias. Not everyone lives in safe neighborhoods, can afford safe housing and healthy food, and benefits from quality education—all social determinants that have a significant effect on health outcomes. Because not everyone has equal opportunity to access the resources needed for health and well-being, disparities are pervasive from the earliest years of life.
“The decisions we make depend on the choices available to us,” says NICHQ Chief Health Officer, Elizabeth Coté, MD, MPA. “And not everyone has a healthy set of choices available to them. People try to do the best they can with the choices before them. As a caring society, we can make healthier choices more available to more people. To do that, we must understand how systems and structural barriers limit people’s choices, creating much of these troubling disparities.”
[For more on this story, go to https://www.nichq.org/insight/...ity-what-you-can-do?]
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