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Article: Implementing the Institute of Medicine definition of disparities: an application to mental health care.(Methods)
- Article from:
- Health Services Research
- Article date:
- October 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Health Research and Educational Trust. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In health care, the term "disparities" refers to the unequal treatment of patients on the basis of race or ethnicity, and sometimes on the basis of gender or other patient characteristics. A consensus has emerged that eliminating disparities should be a major goal of health policy, but the empirical and policy literature fails to agree on what a "disparity" is, and how it should be measured. Empirical research often estimates coefficients of race/ethnicity variables without relating these coefficients to an explicit definition of disparity.
The recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care ...