Health care in America faces a serious crisis. In addition to rising healthcare costs, patient safety and medical errors, and the growing number of uninsured Americans, research shows that racial and ethnic inequalities in medical treatment persist in significant measure for many diseases. As a result, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders and American Indians/Alaska Natives are more likely to have poor health and die prematurely. Health disparities exist not only in the United States but also throughout the world.

• What are health disparities?
  
  
• Why do health disparities exist?
  
  
• Learn more about what others are doing to eliminate health disparities
  
  
• Take action now to eliminate health disparities
  
  
• Planning your career and working to eliminate disparities
  
  
• Fact sheets
  
  
• Disparities globally
  
  
• Examining Medical Student Education and Action on Health Disparities - AMSA 2004 Preconvention (PDF)

National Health Disparities Task Force

Find out about this task force and how you can get involved.

Who's Your Doctor? Campaign

AMSA's national campaign to attack health disparities and the lack of preventive medicine

Join the Disparities Listserve

This electronic mailing list (derived from AMSA's 2004 pre-convention, "Examining Student Education and Action on Health Disparities") provides a means of communication for students and faculty on health and health care disparities. We hope you find it helpful in sharing curricula, ideas and projects between institutions, other medical student and health professional associations. Listserve Guidelines

AMSA's National Initiative on Disparities - Global AIDS

The Global HIV/AIDS Pandemic is the cause of the greatest health disparities in the world to date. The voice of health professionals is crucial to building a dedicated response to rid the world of AIDS. Find out more about the Global AIDS Advocacy Network.

AMSA Foundation American Health Care System Survey (2002)

In order to help direct medical education reforms that would enable medical schools to better address issues of health policy and disparities in health access, Jeff Huebner, M.D., AMSA's first Jack Rutledge Fellow, and the AMSA Foundation developed the first nationwide, randomized study of medical students' knowledge and attitudes about health policy, health care delivery, options for health care reform, and racial/ethnic disparities in health care access. Read the executive summary and final report.

Published Works

Wilson E; Grumbach K; Huebner J; Agrawal J; Bindman A. Medical Student, Physician, and Public Perceptions of Health Care Disparities. Fam Med. 2004 Nov-Dec;36(10):715-21.