In 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine convened a roundtable on The Intersections Among Health Disparities, Health Equity, and Health Literacy and commissioned a paper to be presented at the workshop.
The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) was selected as the lead team in authoring the paper “Compounded Disparities: Health Equity at the Intersection of Disability, Race, and Ethnicity.”
The paper’s conclusion: “If we are going to increase health equity and improve health outcomes for people with disabilities—particularly those at the intersections of diverse race, ethnicity, and language characteristics—the covert biases and discrimination against these populations will require us to correct the false assumptions about disability, race, and ethnicity that underlie the way we deliver health care, the historical development of our public health systems, and our disregard for the health disparities experienced by some groups as a natural consequence of being in the group, rather than inequities to be corrected.”
AUTHORS:
• DREDF Senior Attorney, Silvia Yee
• DREDF Senior Policy Advisor, Mary Lou Breslin
CO-AUTHORS:
• Tawara D. Goode with the Department of Pediatrics, Georgetown University Medical Center and National Center for Cultural Competence, Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development
• Susan M. Havercamp with the Health Promotion and Healthcare Parity Program / Nisonger Center-UCEDD
• Willi Horner-Johnson with the Institute on Development and Disability, Oregon Health and Science University
• Lisa I. Iezzoni with the Mongan Institute Health Policy Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Massachusetts General Hospital
• Gloria Krahn with College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University