1. Improving Health Equity through Collective Community Action Forum
Health Equity, Inequity, and Disparities in Hispanics in the United States
Jorge Gomez, MD, PhD
University of Arizona
Improving Health Equity through Collective Community Action Forum
Yuma, Arizona
June 13, 2018

2. Health Equity, Inequity, and Disparities
Definitions
Health Equity: Attainment of the highest level of health for all people. Health Equity means efforts to ensure that all people have full and equal access to opportunities that enable them to lead healthy lives.
Health Inequities: Differences in health that are avoidable, unfair, and unjust. Health inequities are affected by social, economic, and environmental conditions.
Health Disparities: unequal burden of disease in a population due to race, ethnicity, gender, education, socioeconomic status, disability, geographic location, sexual orientation, cultural or religious believes (DHHS)

3. Health Disparities
Resulted from historical and current unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources (CDC). Specifically:
Poverty
Environmental Threats
Inadequate access to Health Care
Individual and behavioral factors
Educational inequalities

4. Health Disparities Directly Related to Inequities in Education
Groups/Individuals with less education experience higher health risks
Obesity
Substance abuse
Shorter life span
Teenage pregnancy
Poor dietary choices
Inadequate physical activity
Lack of understanding of basic health information
Inappropriate (or lack of) health decisions

5. Disease-Specific Health Disparities: Cancer
People with lower SES have higher cancer rates
Higher risk at developing cancer: don’t follow prevention, screening, early diagnosis guidelines
Less chances of surviving cancer: late diagnosis, adherence to treatment, changing life styles
Race and Ethnicity
AA men higher cancer incidence and mortality and lower survival rate
Native Americans: cancer is the second leading cause of death and poorest 5 year survival rate after diagnosis
Asian Americans have the highest cancer rates for liver and stomach cancers. Twice as likely to die of these cancers than whites
Hispanic/Latinos highest cancer rates associated with infection: liver, stomach, and cervical cancers
Overall lower incidence of cancer, BUT diagnosed at advanced state and more likely to die from cancer than whites

6. Elimination of Health Disparities: Recommendations (Surgeon General)
Strategic focus on communities at greatest risk
Reduce barriers to quality health care
Increase the capacity of the prevention workforce to identify and address health disparities
Support research to identify effective strategies to eliminate health disparities
Standardize and collect data to better identify and address health disparities

17. Cancer Health Disparities Project Open Invitation
To better understand the natural course of cancer in the Hispanic population in Arizona
To correlate risk factors specific to Hispanics and clinical outcomes
To correlate known clinical parameters to pharmacogenetics/genomics in Hispanics in Arizona