The health of the citizens of this country has improved dramatically over the last one hundred years. Race and ethnicity have always made a difference in these statistics, however. Blacks have always experienced worse health than whites and Hispanic Americans have better health in Cuban and Mexican populations than in the Puerto Rican population. Asian Americans experience relatively good health in comparison to the other minority populations except for the Samoans and Native Hawaiians. The Asian community, among other things, is dealing aggressively with male smoking issues (especially Southeast Asian) prenatal care, cancer, infant mortality and access to care.

Native Americans have worse health than the majority population. Some of the differences are due to social issues, including socioeconomic levels, high-risk behavior and environmental circumstances. Other factors include occupational risk, stress and poor access to care. The diseases most that are the most statistically significant in the disparity include diabetes, cancer, infant mortality, substance abuse and violence and cardiovascular disease and the newest disease, AIDS.

The health gap between majority and minority populations has been in existence for many years. Some of the earliest formal, written acknowledgements of the disparity goes back to 1914, when Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University, started a project to "conserve the health in order to preserve the future of the race". A review of the history his work and his initiation of "Health Improvement Week" in 1915, can be found at www.nmhm.org., click on history.

The history of the development of National Minority Health Month from Booker T. Washington’s work is included in the toolkit because the history is rich in information and there are coalitions that were built then that can assist you in your work of eliminating the disparity today.
In 1985, a Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health identified the relative health status of the minorities and whites. This was an important report because it occurred during a conservative administration, was government centered and covered all ethnic minorities, not just blacks.

Additionally, the report chronicled the consequence of early death because of the disparity, a fact that made the results of the disparity more than just a social upset. Also significant was that the Secretary of Health and Human Services created the Office of Minority Health, with the charge of fixing the problem of the disparity. Most recently, the federal government has reported in the papers titled Healthy People 2000 and Healthy People 2010 that the disparity continues and programs have been put in place to eliminate it by 2010. The health disparity section of the Healthy People 2010 report can be viewed on www.health.gov/healthypeople.