The goal of eliminating disparities in health care in the United States remains elusive. Even as quality improves on specific measures, disparities often persist. Addressing these disparities must begin with the fundamental step of bringing the nature of the disparities and the groups at risk for those disparities to light by collecting health care quality information stratified by race, ethnicity and language data. Then attention can be focused on where interventions might be best applied, and on planning and evaluating those efforts to inform the development of policy and the application of resources. A lack of standardization of categories for race, ethnicity, and language data has been suggested as one obstacle to achieving more widespread collection and utilization of these data. Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data identifies current models for collecting and coding race, ethnicity, and language data; reviews challenges involved in obtaining these data, and makes recommendations for a nationally standardized approach for use in health care quality improvement.
Author(s): Subcommittee on Standardized Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement, Institute of Medicine, Cheryl Ulmer, Bernadette McFadden, David R. Nerenz
Publisher: National Academies Press
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 286
FrontMatter......Page 2
Reviewers
......Page 8
Foreword......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
Acknowledgments......Page 14
Contents......Page 18
Boxes, Figures, and Tables......Page 20
Summary......Page 24
1 Introduction......Page 36
2 Evidence of Disparities Among Ethnicity Groups......Page 54
3 Defining Categorization Needs for Race and Ethnicity Data......Page 84
4 Defining Language Need and Categories for Collection......Page 116
5 Improving Data Collection Across the Health Care System......Page 150
6 Implementation......Page 170
Appendix A: Acronyms and Abbreviations......Page 186
Appendix B: Legislation Cited in Report......Page 190
Appendix C: Workshop Agendas......Page 194
Appendix D: Subcommittee Member and Staff Biographies......Page 200
Appendix E: Subcommittee Template: Developing a National Standard Set of Granular Ethnicity Categories and a Rollup Scheme......Page 206
Appendix F: Granular Ethnicities with No Determinate OMB Race Classification......Page 222
Appendix G: Kaiser Permanente: Evolution of Data Collection on Race, Ethnicity, and Language Preference Information......Page 224
Appendix H: Contra Costa Health Plan Language Assistance Database and Ethnicity Categories......Page 244
Appendix I: Subcommittee Template: Developing a National Standard Set of Spoken Language Categories and Coding......Page 260
