A Statement about Minority Health Month by Dr. Rhonda Medows

Minority Health Month
Dr. Rhonda Medows

Access to high quality health care continues to be a major problem facing Georgians, particularly in minority communities.

Although our nation leads the world in health care research and treatment options, more than 1.7 million Georgians do not have health insurance. Hispanics make up the largest group of uninsured Georgians at 20 percent and African-Americans make up the second largest at 13 percent.

Georgia has 118 rural counties. Poverty rates for rural counties exceed those in urban counties by 58 percent. Our state’s rural counties have approximately half as many physicians and dramatic shortages of nurses, therapists, and nutritionists (per capita) as the metro counties.

If we look further, disparities that affect health care availability and quality of care are stark.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), African-American babies are 2.5 times as likely to die in their first year of life, Native American babies are two times as likely and Hispanic babies are 2.3 times as likely to die within the first year as white babies.

Among adults, when compared with non-Hispanic whites, diagnosed diabetes rates are about 60 percent higher in African Americans; 110 percent to 120 percent higher in Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans; and Native Americans have the highest rates of diabetes in the world.

The death rate due to stroke and cardiovascular disease is 40.2 times higher for African Americans than whites. For Native Americans, the death rate is 14.7 times higher than for the total U.S. population.

And the list of disparities goes on.

Some of the causes of health disparities include limited access to quality preventive health care due to poverty, workforce shortages, and cultural and linguistic barriers. Without access to health care, minority patients are at a greater risk of poor health outcomes than non-minority patients.

April is Minority Health Month. Make time to look at what you can do to improve access to health care and to increase the community’s knowledge of healthy behaviors, health care resources and healthy choices.