Improving Children's Health: Understanding Children's Health Disparities and Promising Approaches to Address Them
Children's Defense Fund.
This study and report were made possible by the generous support of the Aetna Foundation.
Child Health Disparities and Community Programs.
Despite the increasing documentation of disparities in numerous conditions and health outcomes, these insights have not led to significant improvements in racial and ethnic disparities overall, in part, because the factors contributing to these inequalities are complex and their interactions inadequately understood.
In the same year, 17.3 percent of Blacks and 11.4 percent of Hispanics had attained at least a bachelor's degree compared to 30 percent of non-Hispanic Whites.11 In terms of income, Black households earn 62 cents, and Hispanics earn 71 cents for every dollar earned by White households in median family income.12 The inequities in resources are magnified several times more when real estate, stock portfolios, and inherited wealth are taken into account.
In some cases, limiting the analysis to children in families with incomes below 200 percent of poverty actually eliminated the racial/ethnic disparities.
Without expanding eligibility for public health insurance programs, many non-native born children will continue to lack adequate access to care, and harmful health disparities will persist.
Objectives related to these healthcare issues are included in Healthy People 2010, a national initiative to achieve 467 specific health objectives by 2010.
Despite the profound benefits of immunizations, there have been recent claims that some vaccines are causing children to get sick or develop certain conditions, thereby raising the risk that some children will not be immunized.
Many of them depend on partnerships between community members and local community groups, churches, schools, or other children's health programs.
