title: Historical and current policy efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States: future opportunities for public health education research.
abstract: In the summer of 2005, the Society for Public Health Education convened a meeting, Health Disparities and Social Inequities, with the task of setting the minority health disparities research agenda for public health educators. The article provides a history of minority health efforts beginning with the Negro Health Improvement Week in 1915 and an overview of National Institutes of Health's (NIH) current 5-year strategic research plan to eliminate health disparities. The plan's goals represent a significant investment in minority health research and the emergence of NIH as the leading federal agency funding health disparity research. Understanding the history of minority health efforts and current health disparity research offers a perspective that will help guide public health educators in reaching the Healthy People 2010 goal of eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities.
authors.affiliation: Center for Minority Health in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Stephen B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.forename: Georges C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Benjamin
authors.forename: Donna
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Almario
authors.forename: Monica J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Lathan
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American; D005006:Ethnicity; D006266:Health Education; D006291:Health Policy; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008913:Minority Groups; D009316:National Institutes of Health (U.S.); D011287:Prejudice; D011634:Public Health; D014481:United States