Why everyone should care about health disparities – and what to do about them
In this article by Genaro C. Armas at the American Heart Association, our Founder and Center Director, Dr. Lisa Cooper shares about her work to meet community members where they are and the many gaps of the United States Healthcare system that contribute to health disparities.
So, how exactly do we define health disparities? A 2020 advisory from the American Heart Association defined health disparities as “a particular type of health difference that is closely linked with social, economic, and environmental disadvantage. Health disparities adversely affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health” based on either racial or ethnic background, or other characteristics linked to discrimination or exclusion.
Dr. Cooper discusses the invasive reach of health disparities. Not only do the most vulnerable suffer, but “not addressing inequities and not assuring opportunities for the most vulnerable in our society actually harm us all,” said Dr. Cooper. The coronavirus pandemic has intricately highlighted many of these vulnerabilities of lower socioeconomic communities that the Center for Health Equity has been researching for over a decade.
In Dr. Cooper’s new book to be published on June 29 Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?, she walks the reader through how we can work together to eliminate the injustices that plague our health care system and society. The book follows Cooper's journey from her childhood in Liberia, West Africa, to her thirty-year career working first as a clinician and then as a health equity researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Drawing on her experiences, it explores how differences in communication and the quality of relationships affect health outcomes. Through her work as the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, it details the actions and policies needed to reduce and eliminate the conditions that are harming us all.