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There were gains in coverage across most racial and ethnic groups between 2019 and 2023 after several years of rising uninsured rates during the first Trump administration. The coverage gains between 2019 and 2023 were largely driven by increases in Medicaid coverage, reflecting policies to stabilize and expand access to affordable coverage that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In October 2024, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved the first ever Section 1115 waiver demonstration amendments that would allow Medicaid and CHIP coverage of traditional health care practices for American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) people in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Oregon. This Waiver Watch reviews disparities in health and health care for AIAN people and summarizes the key features of the approved waivers.
How race, ethnicity, and nationality have been defined and measured has important implications for health disparities, affecting who can access health, social, and economic resources. While narrow and inconsistent race and ethnicity categories have obscured inequities and limited the ability to address the diverse needs of different populations, data on race and ethnicity have also been used to address disparities by informing policies and interventions.
Disparities in health and health care for people of color and underserved groups are longstanding challenges. This brief provides an introduction to what health and health care disparities are, why it is important to address disparities, the status of disparities today, recent federal actions to address disparities, and key issues related to addressing disparities looking ahead.
About a third (32%) of the public view racism as a major problem in health care, fewer than say the same about politics (56%), the criminal justice system (54%), and policing (51%), a new KFF report on the public’s views of racism finds.
This brief provides an overview of diversity in clinical trials, disparities in access to novel drug therapies and other treatments, and the implications for health and health care.
This analysis provides an overview of American Indian and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander people and their health coverage as well as the implications for their access to health care.
Recent literature shows that within the U.S., some communities of color have higher risks of heat-related mortality than White people. Consistent with trends in earlier years, between 2018-2021, AIAN people were most likely to die due to heat compared to all other racial and ethnic groups, and Black people had a higher rate of heat-related deaths compared to White people.
Adults of color, noncitizens, and adults with lower educational attainment and incomes are disproportionately employed in occupations with increased climate-related health risks. Moreover, workers in occupations with increased climate-related health risks are more likely to be uninsured, contributing to challenges accessing health care.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. population experienced the most significant two-year decline in life expectancy in roughly a century, according to new research by KFF, with data showing that COVID-19 deaths disproportionately impacted people of color and exacerbating longstanding racial disparities in life expectancy. While overall U.S. life expectancy declined by 2.
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