Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness and sharpened the discussion of systemic racial disparities in the U.S. health care system. These inequities existed long before the pandemic and have been recognized for decades, yet they continue and, in some cases, have worsened. Cancer consistently ranks as one of the leading…
KFF is collecting and analyzing data on COVID-19 vaccinations by race/ethnicity to gain increased insight who is receiving the vaccine and whether some groups are facing disparities in vaccination.
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified pre-existing health disparities for justice-involved populations, with coronavirus infection rates among incarcerated populations higher than overall infection rates in nearly all states. Justice-involved individuals are disproportionately low-income and often have complex and/or chronic conditions, including behavioral health needs. Although the statutory inmate exclusion policy prohibits Medicaid from covering services provided during incarceration (except for inpatient services), states may take other steps to leverage Medicaid to improve continuity of care for justice-involved individuals.
A new KFF brief examines the use of racial classification in medical care and teaching and identifies how these practices can contribute to ongoing racial disparities in health and health care. There are growing efforts within the medical community to examine and revise the use of race in medical care…
This brief reviews how race is incorporated into medical care and training and discusses implications for health and health care disparities and efforts to advance health equity.
This data note reviews data currently available at the federal and state level on race/ethnicity of booster shot recipients of COVID-19 vaccines.
Increasing availability of high-quality comprehensive data disaggregated by race/ethnicity is a prerequisite for efforts to advance health equity, not only related to COVID-19 but in health and health care more broadly.
As the COVID-19 pandemic’s focus shifts from urban to rural areas, and more people resume public activities, a new KFF analysis of case and death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals narrower disparities affecting Black and Hispanic people compared to White people now than earlier in…
This analysis of case and death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals narrower disparities affecting Black and Hispanic people compared to White people now than earlier in the pandemic.
While the federal, state, and survey data all show narrowing racial disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates over time, they vary in the magnitude of this narrowing, with some surveys showing that gaps have closed, while the administrative data pointing to some remaining differences. This variation in findings reflects both differences and limitations across the datasets.
