This blog aims to be a wide ranging discussion of health disparities in the USA, their inter-connections globally, and how to improve our poplulation's health status through efforts to eliminate and/or minimize existing health disparities. It has grown out of the work of a leading non-profit organization, The Institute for the Advancement of Multicultural and Minority Medicine (IAMMM), web site address below. IAMMM includes four units: the Martin Luther King jr. Center for Health Equity, the Henry Lucas Health Policy Center, the Division of Community-based and Cultural Programs, and the Friends of Health Disparities Research. Much of IAMMM's work in the past and its plans for the future include raising the level of policy sophistication among health professionals, researchers and lay people interested in eliminating health disparities, so that we can more effectively help our increasingly multicultural society in coping with these important and sometimes very complex issues. (Although we began this blog allowing only invited participant authors to post comments, as of 21 June, we have opened the blog to all readers. We hope contributors will identify themselves, but that isn't necessary so that anonymous posts are welcome.)
I am taking the iniitiative on this project because: 1)I serve as the Board Chairperson of the IAMMM and have been a physician,who has for forty years been much involved with health policy in general; 2)the potential fruits of the blog will inform IAMMM's future educational and advocacy efforts even as it is hoped it will be helpful to anyone who participates; 3)I have the time to get this program underway with the help of about twenty friends and colleagues, many of whom are among the first group of designated members of the Martin Luther King jr Society of Senior Fellows; and finally 4)the concept of looking at health policy through the eyes of people and patients suffering from one or more of the health disparities is too appealing to pass by. Subsequent introductory entries will describe the general processes, timetables and the list of issues to be discussed. (IAMMM website...www.Iammm.org)
I am taking the iniitiative on this project because: 1)I serve as the Board Chairperson of the IAMMM and have been a physician,who has for forty years been much involved with health policy in general; 2)the potential fruits of the blog will inform IAMMM's future educational and advocacy efforts even as it is hoped it will be helpful to anyone who participates; 3)I have the time to get this program underway with the help of about twenty friends and colleagues, many of whom are among the first group of designated members of the Martin Luther King jr Society of Senior Fellows; and finally 4)the concept of looking at health policy through the eyes of people and patients suffering from one or more of the health disparities is too appealing to pass by. Subsequent introductory entries will describe the general processes, timetables and the list of issues to be discussed. (IAMMM website...www.Iammm.org)
